Silent Hill: Regression
by Trobson666
Summary: CHAPTER 10 UP! Katie and Geoffrey both face their own personal nightmares in the cold, foggy streets of Silent Hill... First fanfic, so be nice :
1. Nightmares and Hangovers

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything Silent Hill related, but most characters and ideas are of my own creation.

**Overview: **People end up in Silent Hill. It wants them, and they don't know why. They must help each other, and at the same time help themselves; there is the horror of Silent Hill that they can all see, but there is also the personal horrors that the evil exploits and manifests. Each of the 3 main characters has his/her own past nightmares that are seized and manifested.

**Thoughts: **I decided to tackle the source of the evil, or at least _a_ source; however, do not despair, because I _have _done a considerable amount of research, and believe that the idea and outcome is a very possible and believable scenario in relation to the games. The Red God will play a large part in the game, as will key Order members (some believed dead), past enemies, as well as new enemies created to replace the old ones thought defeated. Pyramid Head will appear, as will Valtiel, and Metatron (which I consider to be Valtiels counterpart). I hope I haven't given too much away, but enjoy!

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Philip Snow lay spread-eagled on his bed. He twitched slightly and tried to fidget his way out of the cold, sweaty sheets which clung to his damp skin. It was not a hot night however; in fact, it was deathly cold, but Philip Snow was used to the cold. Every night his dreams were polluted by cold and acrid tundra of frost, lichen, and in the centre of it all, and great stone temple capped with snow. He'd wake up at the foot of a great set of wooden stairs that were carved into the plateau on which the temple sat, and he would climb them slowly. In his mind he wanted to turn around. Running away and freezing to death in the endless everlasting wasteland was better than what he knew was coming. But his body was not in agreement with his mind, and like he was spurred on by and invisible force he would continue to climb the stairs, agonizingly slowly. He'd climb them for an eternity, the heavy aching cold seeping further and further into his bones with every impossible step… But just when his body was about to freeze solid and he would be unable to continue further, he would reach the summit of the stairs and would gaze left to right, right to left, left to right at his surroundings. The temple would be squatting menacingly in the middle, omnipresent, unmoving, but ominous, and the ground beneath his feet would be glowing slightly; pulsating with the heartbeat of a great and powerful beast, but he would not welcome it. Even though the solid, dead land was the worst thing he thought he could ever experience, the phenomena of the pulsating ground seemed to be infinitely more terrifying. Thoughts of an infinite creature filled his mind, a creature so impossibly huge that no distinguishable features could be made out. It would spread across the land, cover the sky and crush him with an unimaginably powerful weight… But that was just his mindless speculation. He would emerge from his thoughts kneeling with his head bowed at the foot of the temple door. He would stand up, and attempt to push it open. The huge oak panels would open only slightly before jamming, and a heavy golden orange glow would emerge from the cracks. He would slam himself into the door, and when it still refused to open his would put his eye to the crack in an attempt to see what was on the other side. The orange glow would envelop him and…

…he woke up a little after dawn and groaned wearily. His body ached with the cold he'd endured all night, and his skin was clammy with fevered sweat. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, opened them, and winced as strong yellow sunbeams cut through the open blinds and struck him in the face. Propping himself up on a pillow he lay there for a few minutes and waited for his eyes to get use the light. He glanced at the figure in the bed beside him and smiled lovingly. His girlfriend of 3 years Rachel Morley lay on her front as he gently stroked her long, silky brown hair. Her big blue eyes blinked open and she gazed up at him, returning his glance.

'Morning,' she whispered.

'Good morning.'

Rachel yawned and reached for the tall glass of water on her bedside cabinet. She took a swig.

'I wish we hadn't decorated this room so damn modern,' said Philip. He jumped out of bed suddenly and padded into the en-suit bathroom.

'Why?' she called after him, slipping her slim naked frame from under the damp sheets and wrapping herself in a pristine white towel.

'It's so bloody white!' he called back. 'Every morning I have to sit with my eyes barely open for about ten minutes until they get used to the light. It's so annoying…'

She smiled and looked around the room. White walls, silver metallic furniture, floor to ceiling mirror. She took another swig of water and as she did so, left the refuge of the warm sunlight. 'Jesus Christ, it's cold,' she yelped suddenly.

'I know,' Philip laughed. 'It has been for about 3 weeks. I don't think it's gonna shift until after winter to be honest. Come have a hot shower before breakfast! That'll make you feel better.'

Rachel followed him into the bathroom and wrapped her arms around his bare chest as he stood brushing his teeth in the mirror. She gently stroked his black 5 o'clock shadow. 'Shave this off and you can join me if you want,' she whispered into his ear.

Philip smiled and reached for the razor.

- - - - -

At the breakfast table Philip sipped a scalding cup of black coffee and rubbed his temples, impatiently thumbing his way through the morning's paper.

Rachel sat opposite him and bit into an apple. 'What's wrong honey? Did you have that nightmare again?' she asked, placing her hand on his.

'Yeah, I have it most nights these days. I haven't had a decent nights sleep in weeks. Thank god for coffee ey?' he laughed dryly.

'Maybe you should go see a doctor or psychologist or something,' Rachel pressed, clearly concerned for his mental health.

'Nah, I'm fine. Just need another couple of coffees, and I'm ready for work,' he protested, talking a mouthful of hot coffee and choking it down hurriedly.

'OK, if you're sure,' said Rachel, backing off but not at all convinced. 'I'm going to go get dressed'. She went back into the bedroom, slipping her dressing gown off as she did so.

Philip sighed and put his paper down. He got up and opened the small fridge that the young couple were given by his parents when they first moved into the two bed roomed apartment over 18 months before. He sighed again when he saw the contents, and pulling a pad of paper from a nearby draw began to draw up a shopping list. Halfway though writing 'bread', there was a scratching at the window and he looked up to see a large black cat pawing in his direction and meowing loudly. He smiled and rushed over, opening the window and gathering the cat into his arms. 'Hello my little moggy,' he cooed as he struggled to shut the window with just a little finger.

Rachel came into the kitchen dressed in a smart pair of black trousers, a blue blouse and a black jacket. She smiled at Philip as he pampered the cat. 'Philip, leave the poor thing alone and get dressed. You've got work in 20 minutes.' She looked at her watch. 'Ahh, shit I'm gonna be late. I have to go!' She ran up and kissed him on the lips, gave the cat a hasty stroke, grabbed a small briefcase and lunged for the door.

'See you tonight babe!' he called after her, but she'd already gone. Philip smiled and dropped the cat onto their small two-seater sofa before putting his black leather jacket on and grabbing the keys to his motorbike. He glanced at his watch. 'I'm gonna have to be bloody quick to get to work on time,' he muttered to himself, running out of the door and slamming it shut behind him.

- - - - -

It was 7:32am according to Geoffrey Simmons' alarm clock, and that meant he was still alive. He lay splayed out on the floor of a very dark room, and the only light was the red glow of the alarm clocks digital screen. He sat up and groaned as his head thundered with the force of the mother of all headaches. He flicked on a small lamp to his left and noticed the 3 empty bottles in the corner of the room, one stood upright, one on its side, one broken. He flicked his tongue around his mouth, tasting the combination of vomit and whisky on his teeth and breath.

He staggered to his feet and entered the hallway. 'Why aren't I dead?' he grumbled. The entire apartment was blacked out, so he flipped every light switch he came across, except of course those which he knew had strong bulbs. He entered the bathroom but left the light off, instead propping the door open with an old newspaper (that for some reason was on the floor). The light from the upstairs landing was enough for him to see the toilet. He bent over suddenly and retched emptily. There was nothing left in his stomach of course; it was all over himself and the floor of the utility room. He collapsed onto the floor and mused over his pitiful life.

He'd never been in a successful relationship. At the age of 5, his mother committed suicide, and at the age of 8, his father was beaten to death by 3 teenagers who thought he was the local burglar (that had a sick calling card of murdering all pets in the houses which he robbed). This was completely untrue. Geoff's father was his world after his mother died, and he was a kind and gentle man, with a stable 9 to 5 job. No new purchases magically appeared in the house, and he rarely went out.

After his father's death, Geoffrey went to live with an aunt in London and was brought up over the next 8 years very strictly. At the age of 16 he left his aunt and began to train to be a police officer. After 5 years he joined the Toluca County police force and now, at the age of 36 he was a homicide detective. His job had taken it's toll. He had become desensitised to death and violence, and his lack of compassion had left him with only 4 short-lived relationships with women in his whole life. He'd hit rock bottom a few weeks beforehand and was getting drunk far too often for any normal human being. He didn't care though. He wanted to die.

He lay there on the bathroom floor barely conscious, head thumping for god knows how long. Then his mobile phone began to ring. Groaning, he pulled it out of his pocket and put it to his ear.

'Hello, Geoffrey Simmons speaking,' he said, trying to put on the most normal voice he could muster.

'Geoff, it's me, Robin. Where he hell are you man? Work started an hour ago,' said the voice on the other end.

He looked at his watch. 'Shit… I over slept. Cover me for another 10 minutes?'

A sigh on the other end. 'This is the last time I'm doing this Geoff. Sort your life out mate.' Then the phone was put down.

Geoffrey stood up and brushed himself down. Grabbing his toothbrush he began to get ready.

- - - - -

At around 8 o'clock, Geoffrey Simmons sneaked through the doors of police HQ and managed to get to his desk unnoticed. A tall black male approached him.

'Jesus Christ Geoff! You said 10 minutes!' he hissed, sitting down at the other side of the baby blue wooden booth.

'Sorry Rob, I was in a bad way and really needed to scrub up. I'm still over the limit from last night as well, so I ran to work instead of drove,' he protested smoothly, grabbing the dirty mug off his desk and going over to the coffee jug.

'Look, whatever man, just don't do it again! If the boss finds out, he'll fire both our asses, and I have kids man. I can't afford to be covering your ass every god damn day!' Robin continued.

'Yeah, OK, I'm sorry. I'll sort myself out. For the sake of your kids.'

Robin nodded. 'Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.'

'Can we get down to business now? We're already nearly an hour and a half behind,' said Geoff, grabbing a handful of paperwork and sifting through it randomly.

'Yeah, c'mon, lets get down to it'.

- - - - -

Philip Snow sat at his desk in the upper levels of his local bank and tapped away furiously at his keyboard, glancing frequently to and fro at the two monitors. As an accountant Philip spent a lot of time typing away at a computer and as a result, he developed RSI in his wrists and neck. He had claimed compensation and gained about £6,000 (enough to put a deposit down on his and Rachel's apartment). This made a lot of staff there resentful towards him, because they too tried to sue the bank for RSI but he was the only one to win. One of the most resentful members of staff was his partner, Larry Woodshaw.

'Good morning Philip. Made any successful claims today?' the fat ginger-haired 28 year old asked as he strolled over and took a seat at a desk not far from him.

'Get a life you fat moron. I got 6 grand. Who cares? We both earn so much more than that every year, so what's your damn problem?' Philip yelled suddenly.

'Chill out!' Larry exclaimed as suddenly and as loudly as Philip had. Their boss heard and came investigating.

'Is there a problem here?' hissed the grey, thin, smartly clad executive.

'No problem,' said Philip through gritted teeth. He jumped to his feet and sped off to the bathrooms, trying to stop the horrific rage he was feeling from spilling over.

Seating himself in the only cubicle without a 'Danger: Wet Floor' sign, he thought of his dream, of all things.

…that orange glow. What is it? What is happening inside the temple which is producing such a glow...?

There was pounding on the door.

'Hello? Who's in there? Come out, now!' Philip woke to find himself lying on the floor of the cubicle, and there was a familiar coppery tang in his mouth. Blood? Thinking quickly, but without reason, he jumped to his feet and crouched over the toilet seat. The figure on the other side of the door bent down and he could see the shadow of his head as it peered into the crack. 'Is there anybody in there? Shit. The door's jammed again. I'd better go get the janitor. He'll sort it.'

The sound of footsteps faded and when they were gone completely he opened the door and peered out. No-one was there. Something had happened though. The room was darker than usual, and the smell of blood was everywhere. It was cold too. Too cold for a well heated building like a bank. He rubbed the warmth back into himself and exited the toilets.

'What the…?' he didn't finish his sentence. There, sitting propped up against the wall was the corpse of a middle-aged man that he recognised by face as one of his colleagues, and he matched it to the voice of the man who was in the toilets with him mere seconds before. The walls were splashed with blood, and his ripped open abdomen dripped fresh gore. 'What had caused those wounds?' he thought. His chest cavity had been cracked open like a shellfish, and his innards spread out across the corridor in a grizzly ritual fashion. There was a low whistling squeak that was constantly fluctuating in the distance, and Philip followed the sound. The lights flickered steadily and a light red mist was settling in the corridors. The sound led him away from the corpse and into a disused part of the building where old computer parts and boxes full of old papers were stored. He entered a small side room and there on the ground was a small handheld radio. The sound was static and feedback, but on closer inspection he noticed that there were no batteries in it. Puzzled, he dropped it into his pocket and began to make his way back to the corpse, his mind filled with confusion and anguish, the radio continually buzzing and squealing. Suddenly the mist began to get heavier and heavier. He couldn't see what was in front of him, walking into a door handle, the sharp metal corner biting into his leg and causing him to fall. He hit the ground, couldn't see anything…

…woke up on the toilet cubicle floor, the coppery tang of blood in his mouth was present, and a pounding headache had settled upon him. Suddenly remembering what had happened he leapt to his feet and dashed out into the bathroom. All was normal. No mist, no cold, no darkness. Just the bank. The same toilets he visited everyday were the same as usual. He put it down to a manic episode, mentally agreeing to Rachel's previous advice to see a doctor, and decided to continue with his work. He left the bathroom and sure enough, there was no corpse. He shook his head and sat back down at his desk, a confused look on his face. Taking a swig of cold coffee, he briefly patted his face and massaged his temples, trying to bring the life back into his body. The warm sunbeams coming in through the windows seemed to avoid him somehow, so he just sat and shivered in his uniform. He decided to put on his jacket, and breathed a sigh of relief as its heavy warm folds enveloped him.

'Jesus Christ Snow, you look like shit', came a voice form around the corner. It was Arthur Stone, the same man who was mauled in his dream. Was it a dream? How did his fall asleep on the toilet without realising? He wasn't at all tired, just fatigued for some reason.

'Thanks for the concern Arthur, now if you don't mind, I'm a bit busy right now', he shot back in as monotonous a voice he could.

'I serious Phil, you're skin… You're really pale!' Arthur replied. Philip couldn't tell whether or not it was genuine concern. He was tempted to go back to the bathroom and look himself in the mirror, but after his breakdown in the cubicle, that's the last thing he wanted to do.

'I'm fine, seriously. Just go away'.

Arthur frowned before turning round and heading back to his desk, muttering expletives under his breath. Philip shook his head slightly before continuing with his work.

- - - - -

Geoffrey Simmons sat in a nearby diner and was tucking into a large steak when Gary Lawson entered. He sighed in disdain and dropped his cutlery.

'Ah, Geoff. Just the man I was looking for', Gary beamed. Taking a seat in the booth, opposite Geoffrey.

He was a short, round man. Not fat, but chubby with a large turkey neck. He was bald on top, but still maintained a straw-like mop of greasy black hair around its perimeter. On his nose sat a pair of large round glasses and his upper lip could not be seen for the large fat slug of a moustache.

He slapped Geoff gently round the side of the head. 'How you been buddy?'

Geoff wriggled in the red leather seat. 'Look, Gary, please, I just want to eat my lunch. No more of this bullshit about leaving Toluca County police and coming back to New York. I like it here!' This was a lie, but it was better than New York. 'The crime there is too much for me. Being a homicide detective there is bloody awful. You know how I feel about that.'

Gary laughed and patted his stomach. He waved over the waitress and ordered a coffee. 'You need to stop jumping the gun old lad. I just came here for a coffee and low and behold, you're here! It's just a coincidence.'

Geoff sighed. 'Don't lie to me Gary. I eat here everyday on my lunch break at 12:25, and you know it. We both know why you're here, and the answer is no.'

Gary shook his head suddenly. 'No, it's about a town not far from here. Screw New York, that's not important anymore, I'm talking about Toluca Lake.'

'What about the lake?' Geoff asked, taken aback by the story.

'A town near the lake called Foresbrook has had some weird shit going on inside it. You remember the Johnson case of '96?'

Geoff leaned in. 'You mean that cult of weirdoes? The ones who sacrificed the children? Yeah, how could I forget…'

Gary's head was bobbing up and down uncontrollably. 'Yeah, you remember? Well we think that some similar shit has been going down in Foresbrook. A school bus of teenagers went missing down there a few days ago, and locals in that area say they've heard chanting and seen great big fires burning at night time.'

'Foresbrook, Foresbrook… Where is that? Toluca Lake you say?'

Gary nodded once again. 'Yeah, it's a big lake. Has quite a few towns dotted around it, but it's a very quiet area.'

Geoffrey was intrigued for a reason he couldn't put his finger on. Cult activity and Toluca Lake seemed to ring a bell, but he didn't know what…

'You OK, Geoff?' asked Gary. He could see the puzzlement on his face very clearly.

'Hmmm, yeah. Look, here's my card. Ring me in 2 hours. There's something I have to check.' In a flash he was up, outside the diner, and in his car.

Gary sat with a perplexed look on his face before sighing quite happily. 'Waste not want not, ' he said before grabbing Geoffrey's unfinished meal and digging in.


	2. Roger and Dad

Later that afternoon Philip Snow went home nearly in tears. There was clearly something wrong with him, he just didn't know what. It was dark and it had been raining, so every time a car drove past him and the puddles reflected the glowing red lights up into his face, he jumped back in surprise, thinking that the red mist was coming back. Huddled to himself against the cold, he regretted the decision to walk home and wished he'd taken the motorbike. 10 minutes of heavy, face freezing cold would have been better than the 40 minutes of lighter cold he was enduring now. He felt bitter, cold and scared as he splashed his way back to his apartment block. Decadent and morbid shapes seemed to swirl around him, and ever time he looked their way they'd either disappear, or transform into a tree or a man walking his dog.

When he reached the apartment block he fumbled for the keys, and entered the lobby. A short fat woman sat behind the desk and shot him an unwelcoming glare.

'You pissed Mr. Snow, eh? Staggering around my lovely building, dirtying my carpets and soaking my brand new wallpaper eh!?' she shouted at him.

Puzzled and taken aback, Philip squinted at her, his face a picture of confusion and disorientation.

'What?' was the only word he could muster.

'Take off your damn shoes! Don't lean on the walls!' she shouted as he stumbled and fell against the wall.

'Oh, sorry,' he replied feebly, realising that his shoes were filthy with mud, dog filth and left over slush from last weeks snow, and that his jacket was still giving off droplets of water which soaked into the carpet and had left a big smear on the wall.

The little woman eye-balled him balefully. 'You watch yourself mister! And permanent damage to my walls or floor? I'll have your head, you hear me?' she squawked at him.

'Did I hear you? The whole bloody neighbourhood heard you,' he shot back, pleased that he was returning to his normal self, at least partially. Maybe if he mustered enough strength, Rachel wouldn't notice.

He ignored her ranting and raving as he made his way up the stairs back to his apartment.

'You all take me for granted…pittance…package then, eh?' he made out from below. Package? He turned around and ran back to the lobby.

'You said something about a package. What package?' he asked.

She smiled grimly. 'Oh, _now _you're interested are you? Nobody cares about me, only that I clean the lobby and corridors, and take all your mail in for you. Here's your damn package you bastard!' she wailed, throwing a small box wrapped in brown paper to him.

He caught it, barely. 'Watch out you crazy bitch! This could be fragile,' snarled in concern for his package. 'Don't worry, because next time the super is here, you're getting reported. Get some help you hormonal wreck!' he yelled before turning on his tail and racing up the stairs leaving a small, angry, and bewildered woman stood behind the front desk.

- - - - -

He ran into his apartment and looked around. Good. Rachel wasn't back from work yet. He grabbed some milk from the fridge, remembered that he still needed to do some shopping, and drank a long gulp, straight from the carton. Then he ran to the bathroom and looked himself in the mirror.

He was a ghostly shade of grey. His blue eyes looked like sapphires against his drab skin, and the bags under his eyes screamed tiredness, even though he only felt mildly drained. Filling the sink with near boiling water he winced as it burnt his face, but smiled as he saw and felt the colour come rushing back to his cheeks.

After gazing into his own reflection for a few minutes he got into the shower and began to stir some heat into his creaky cold bones. He moaned as the hot water seemed to wash away the stress of his day. Larry Woodshaw… his nightmare… the trip home… that psycho in the reception… all gone, down the plughole. He turned off the water, put one foot put of the cubicle…

…_THE ORANGE GLOW ENVELOPED HIS HEAD… HE AWOKE AT THE FOOT OF A GREAT AND POWERFUL DEITY...IT SPOKE…HE DID NOT UNDERSTAND…FLESH CRAWLED ACROSS THE ROOM, STINKING AND FETID, THE FOUNDATIONS BURNT AWAY TO RAW, RUSTY, BLOODY IRON MESH…THE CREATURE SPOKE, THIS TIME IN ENGLISH…IT SAID 'WAKE UP'…_

… 'Wake up Philip. Phil honey, are you OK?' his eyes flicked open. He was naked on the bathroom floor, and there was a sharp pain just above his knee. He fought the compulsion to lie, but could not stop himself.

'Ah, shit… I felt out of the shower, must've hit my head on the sink or something.' He tried to stand up, Rachel supporting him.

'Are you OK', she asked, clearly upset.

Philip nodded his head and smiled wearily. 'Yeah, oh my knee… Help me to the bed will you Rach. That really hurts.'

With Rachel's help he hobbled out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. The bed was made. He pieced how, together. Rachel had changed the sheets when he was unconscious in the shower, and when she called out to him and got no answer, she went in to find him on the floor.

'I'm going to go get you so paracetamol. You bumped your head quite bad. One hell of a lump honey. Maybe I should call an ambulance…'

'No! I'll be, I'll be fine. Yes, a couple of paracetamol would be nice thanks babe,' he protested. She gave him an odd look, but concern clearly outweighed suspicion, so she went to fetch the medicine.

There were less obvious aspects of the dream that he didn't understand, and for some reason it was these that he questioned. What language was the creature talking in? Why did the room come alive and clad itself in skin just to burn? How could there have been iron mesh under the walls of the temple when it was clearly aeons old? He felt very light-headed, and although his knee and head hurt, he felt strangely peaceful. He slipped into a dream, but not a dream of temples, tundra's and eternal demons. A dream of his childhood…

…_mommy and daddy broke up when I was 6, but I saw them both a lot. I lived with Mommy in Brookhaven whilst Daddy lived with Roger in Foresbrook, which was just down the road. Mommy and Daddy said that they didn't love each other anymore, but the still loved me and Roger very much, and they were still friends, so we'd never lose touch. I missed my brother and I often wished he'd stay here with me and Mom, but then Daddy would be lonely and drink beer like he used to do. Daddy did bad things when he had drunk lots, like wee his pants and shout at us. Me and Mommy hated it when he was all drunk, so we used to hide in the closet, but Roger new how to control Daddy because he was older and a boy. Daddy didn't really like women, and Mommy said he was a misogynist, but I didn't know what that means… Roger was 17 and was big and strong. He'd make Daddy nice again with showers and coffee. That's why he went to live with daddy, so he could look after him. One time me and Mommy went to visit Roger and Daddy…_

…and nobody was home. Dahlia knocked on the door again, brushing the golden locks of hair from her eyes. She was considered by many as a very attractive women; a stereotypical busty blonde. She didn't really see it herself. How was a clone of so many other women seen as attractive? 'In protest' as she liked to call it, she liked to dress down and cover up as much as her fantastic figure as she could with baggy clothes. Her little son Philip gazed up at her quizzically.

'Where's Daddy, Mommy? Where's Roger?'

Dahlia scooped him up into her arms. 'I don't know sweetie. Maybe they're round back.'

They both made their way round to the back of the small rundown house and found a dirty, dishevelled man lying on his back amidst the tall, unkempt grass. Dahlia put Philip down and rushed over.

'Jesus Christ David, look at yourself!' she hissed in his ear, glancing round to see the oblivious Philip trying to catch a large toad as it hopped and croaked around the garden.

'Uhh, what'?' was all the drunkard could muster. His eyes rolled in his lolling head as he quietly sang and laughed to himself for no particular reason.

'Hey Mum,' came a voice from the back door. Dahlia turned around to see her eldest son Roger walk over and carelessly slosh a large bucket of cold water over his father. David leapt up suddenly, gasping and spluttering.

'What the hell you…' he choked on a mouthful of water.

'Mum and Philip are here Dad,' Roger said sternly. David stumbled into the side of the house and did his best to hold himself upright.

'Little Philip? And my… my lovely wife?' he asked.

'_Ex_-wife, David. Have you not changed at all? I came here under the impression that you'd changed, but you couldn't even stay sober for your own son's weekly visit?' she spat at him in contempt.

Even through his drunken stupor, David was both hurt and angry at himself. 'Sorry,' was all that he could say.

'Save it David. I'm taking Philip and I never want to see you again. Roger, you can come to mine and Philips house if you want to visit us,' said Dahlia.

'But what about Dad? Can't ever leave him on his own,' protested the gangly teen, looking at his father with a combined look of pity and distaste on his face.

'Screw your father! He clearly doesn't give a shit about either you _or _Philip,' came the harsh reality from her perfect mouth. She turned suddenly to leave and saw Philip stood gazing up at her, toad clutched in his hands, eyes open wide.

'Daddy doesn't love us Mommy?' he quizzed, tears welling in his eyes. She ignored his question.

'Come one darling. Let's leave, and never come back.'

The last Philip ever saw of his father was a drunken wreck spewing all over the garden, oblivious to his, his mothers or his brothers presence. He was overwhelmed with sadness…

He awoke sometime later with Rachel looming over him, glass of water in one hand, two white tablets in the other.

'Here you go babe. Get these down you'. She handed him the pills and the glass. Philip rubbed his head.

'How long have I been out?' he asked through blurry eyes. He felt tired and heavy hearted, but not too bad considering how he felt before.

'What do you mean? I've been gone for like, 20 seconds,' she laughed.

Philip raised his eyebrows in amazement before taking the pills from her grasp and swallowing them with a mouthful of water. Then he remembered the package.

He leapt out of bed with an agility that surprised them both and grabbed the small box from where he'd left it on the kitchen table. She followed him in, brushing the long strands of brown hair behind her ears as she did so.

'What's that?' she asked.

Philip shook his head. 'No idea. That crazy bitch from the reception gave me it when I got back from work. Knowing her it's probably a bomb or something,' he grinned.

Rachel returned the smile half-heartedly. 'You gonna open it then?'

Philip pulled the thin brown paper off the box and opened it carefully. He moved into the light and peered in thoughtfully.

'So, what is it?' Rachel asked a hint of impatience in her voice.

'Err, I don't really know. You have a look.'

He handed her the box and she too took a look inside.

'I know what this is! It's a pendant, but a really weird looking one…' she looked at the pendant and wrinkled her eyes. 'It's shaped like… like, a really deformed beetle or something. It's really pretty!' She pulled it from the box and showed him. It was a flat, blue, oval shape with a small green nub on the top of it. The head maybe? Small metal legs poked from the sides of the beetle, and a tiny but noticeable clasp was visible on the right hand side.

'Open it!' he yelled suddenly excitedly.

She did as he said and in it was a picture, and a note. The picture was of him as a boy and was very creased with age. The note was proving difficult to open.

'Do you know who sent it?' asked Rachel.

Philip shook his head and tried to pry open the note. 'I have no… idea…' he managed to say through his concentration.

She took it from his grasp. 'Let me try, I've got nails after all,' she said, working them into the tiny gap and eventually prising I open.

'You're a star!' he whooped, taking it from her grasp and beginning to read.

_Philip, I haven't seen you in so long! You have to come and visit sometime. Dad and I are still living together, and he's finally stopped drinking. I'm ecstatic because he's been an alcoholic for so long, but finally, he's stopped! You have to come round Philip, and bring Rachel too. I hope that you can forgive Dad. I think that he deserves a second chance from all of us. Come up this weekend. We still live in that crappy house in Foresbrook so you should be able to find it alright. Please come, brother. Dad and I are really looking forward to seeing you Phil._

_Roger_

_P.S. I hope you like the locket. Dad made it for you about 5 years ago, but Mum said she wouldn't tell us where you'd moved to until Dad went sober. Looking forward to seeing you brother._

'Holy shit,' said Philip, dumbfounded.

'What is it?' Rachel asked. 'Tell me!'

'Calm down love,' Philip smiled. 'It's from my brother Roger. He wants us to go visit him and my Dad this weekend.'

'Isn't your Dad a total drunken bum though? That's what you told me,' Rachel said, quite puzzled.

'Yeah, but he got sober apparently. Damn… I haven't seen my Dad in… years. Last time I saw him I must have been 5.' He remembered the dream suddenly. 'No, I was 6. Yeah. Funny thing was I just had a dream about the last time I saw my Dad.'

'A dream? You weren't asleep,' she replied, more confused than ever.

Philip covered his tracks, once again not really knowing why. 'Umm, I mean when I was knocked out on the bathroom floor. That's what a dreamed about.'

She bought it. 'Really? Wow… Not just a total blackout then. That's a crazy coincidence.'

Philip stared at the beetle pendant. 'I know…'

There was something about the whole affair that didn't really ring true; he just didn't know what…

- - - - -

Geoffrey Simmons flicked through the police records feverishly, jumping at every creaky floorboard, rattling window and flickering light in the spooky archives. He shouldn't be there and he knew it, but he needed to find out about the cult of Toluca Lake. He knew it existed, but he didn't know which abandoned file it was hidden in. He'd scoured the endless shelves of dusty files and tapes for nearly 2 hours now. Gary was due to call him soon, so he knew he had to hurry up if he wanted to find what he was looking for before the inevitable vibrating of his mobile phone. He licked at the roof of his mouth (which still tasted like a bears arse!) and sifted through another hefty document in vain. Slamming them onto a nearby desk in frustration he collapsed onto a small wooden chair and began to think very carefully. The Johnson case was in 1996, and he knew that the cult he was thinking of was most active in the year or so after that case… He scanned the room, his eyes resting on an aisle labelled 1997-1998. He'd already checked it though, and nothing about cults was there at all. He knew that he'd heard of the Toluca Lake cult when he was still working in New York, but this was Toluca Country Police Department for god's sake! Surely there would be some record of a terrible crime that took place near the very lake by which the entire county was named after! He stamped his feet aggressively before grabbing the folders he'd removed and beginning to put them back.

When he'd done he stood in the entrance to the dusty archives and scratched his greying beard slightly. He knew that he'd have to go and investigate Foresbrook himself, despite the tentative information on which his whole idea was based on.

He made his way back to his cubicle, mind made up. His partner, Robin Smith was busy working on a case of robbery in a local estate.

'Robin? I think I'm gonna need some time off.' He stood back, expecting a hail of abuse and why he needed to pull himself together, but none came.

'Yeah man, you need some. Take a week's holiday. I can manage this shit by myself, and you really need to sort your shit out, am I right?' the black man asked, rubbing the stubble on his bald head thoughtfully.

'Yeah, there's some stuff I really need to sort out.'

'Private stuff?'

Geoffrey smiled and nodded. He considered telling Robin, but decided against it. 'Private stuff.'

Robin clicked his tongue. 'Just promise me one thing man.'

'Anything.'

'Don't touch any alcohol whilst you're gone.'

'Deal,' said Geoffrey before turning around and going to book his time off.

- - - - -

An hour later he burst out into the cold air and rubbed some warmth into his hands gleefully. He now had a whole week to do as he felt like, and first on his agenda was a visit to the time of Foresbrook with his old buddy Gary Lawson. The problem was, he was supposed to have been rung by Gary nearly an hour and a half ago, but he'd not got so much as a missed call. Almost like an answer to his prayers, his phone began to vibrate. He put it to his ear.

'Jesus Christ Gary! You were supposed to ring me hours ago!' Geoffrey shouted unnecessarily.

'Hahaha, I did it on purpose. If you're anything like you were back in the olden days, you're approximately an hour and a half behind schedule. Correct?'

Geoffrey laughed. 'Yeah, how the hell? Jesus, you caught me like, just as I was coming out of the door.'

Gary suddenly changed the subject. 'Did you find what you were looking for?'

'No,' replied Geoffrey, 'but I've booked a week off work so we can go investigate the disappearance of that bus full of kids.'

'Me too,' laughed Gary. 'I'll meet you at the diner in 20 minutes.' And then the line went dead.

Geoffrey blew into his hands, pulled his collar up and put on a pair of thick woolly gloves. It was going to be a cold, cold winter…

- - - - -

In the cold, fetid darkness, the first teenager awoke. She opened her eyes and gazed down the aisle. Some of the children she knew were already dead, their limbs twisted grotesquely or their heads smashed open like eggs. What had happened? Did they crash? If so, what into? From where she was sitting near the back of the bus, there seemed to be no obvious damage to the front end. The windows were blacked out somehow, like they were buried under tonnes of grey earth, but she did not feel any extra pressure on her head. No, they were definitely not buried.

Accumulating all her strength, she tried to stand, but there was a sudden and terrible biting pain in her side and she collapsed onto the floor of the bus, screaming in agony. This suddenly breakage of the silence seemed to rouse many of the other children, and immediately the confusion began. Where were they? How did they get there? What was happening? But suddenly the pain kicked in, just like with the girl, and all those that were injured began to cry out and attempt to nurse their wounds, some minor, others major.

Panic began to set in as the children realised their situation and the state of their dead classmates. They began to fight their way towards the door, but it would not open. Although there was no damage to the rest of the bus, the door was crumpled and buckled, like somehow the rest of the bus had permanently moulded itself to the only real exit. The windows? Numerous attempts were made to smash the windows, but the outside was covered in a thick layer of ice, and even the strongest boy in the fittest state couldn't budge even the emergency exit.

Suddenly and without warning, the bus radio flickered into life, changing stations like it had a mind of its own. Despite its constant changing, the only sound that the children heard was the constant and merciless sound of static…


	3. Coffee and Fog

As Geoffrey Simmons packed his bags he felt the inevitable feelings of doubt. What the hell was he doing taking off half of his annual holiday to go gallivanting off to some random town on a hunch that it was important? Surely there was already an investigation into the disappearance of the school bus and if Gary Lawson knew the whereabouts of it's disappearance, it shouldn't be too difficult for the police to find it.

He hurriedly packed a few pairs of boxer shorts and a spare T-Shirt, not knowing how long they would be staying in Foresbrook or whether it would be safe enough knowing that the town was full of cultists. He didn't know what was going to happen, but despite all his doubts, he knew that it was just something that he had to do. Normally there is no way he would have gone on this wild goose chase, but his life was at an all-time low, and the trip seemed to be his saviour somehow.

'Shit…' he whispered to himself. He was supposed to be in the diner with Gary right now. Twenty minutes just wasn't enough to get home, pack a bag, lock up and drive to the diner. He began to meticulously lock all the windows and doors to his house. He wasn't going to risk being burgled to get to the diner faster, so Gary would just have to wait.

He was just about to leave and was stood in the hallway with his bags when he caught his reflection in the mirror. His greying hair and beard had merged into a cobweb-like mass which seemed to envelop his head, penetrated only by his tired looking alcohol induced bloodshot eyes. In other words, he looked like crap! He couldn't see how investigating a possible kidnap in a backwater town full of cultists would somehow rejuvenate his soul, but somehow he knew that it would.

After one long glare at himself he left the house, firmly locked the front door and sat in his car for 5 minutes to anticipate the week ahead. He sighed before starting the engine and swinging his car into the darkening and deserted road ahead.

- - - - -

'So you're really going? It's going to be so strange for you to see your father again after so long…' said Rachel, taking a dainty sip from her cappuccino and observing her boyfriend lovingly.

Philip smiled and stroked her free hand. 'You don't have to come with me y'now.'

Rachel nodded. 'I know, but I want to. After all, I was invited.' She smiled gently. 'How did Roger know about me anyway? We've been dating for 3 years, but you tell me you haven't seen him or spoken to him in about 5.'

Philip shrugged. 'Who knows. Mum must've told him I guess. There's no other way he could've found out.'

Suddenly Philip felt something very hot soak his arm and he jumped to his feet in surprise and pain.

'Jesus Christ! What the hell was that?' he yelled, quickly ripping off the jacket that had absorbed most of the liquid and throwing it to the ground. He glared angrily at a small chubby, balding man with a wobbling turkey neck and a fat black moustache.

Gary Lawson looked around sheepishly before beginning to gently dab at Philips arm with a dirty napkin. Philip wrenched his arm away.

'What the hell are you doing you idiot?' he snarled. The diner went quiet.

'I'm just w-w-waiting for a frie-nd…' he stammered. 'I tripped and spilt my coffee, sorry. On your arm, sorry.' He began to sidle off back to his chair like a naughty child.

Philip began to pursue but Rachel pulled him back.

'Leave him Phil, it was an accident, OK?' she said soothingly, pulling him back into his seat.

This seemed to calm him down. 'Yeah. Sorry,' his breathing was heavy. 'Jeez that coffee was hot. I'm going to go run some cold water on my arm.'

He picked his jacket up from the floor and laid it down on his seat before getting up and entering the small diner bathroom. He slapped his cheeks in an attempt to lessen his rage, but it didn't disappear completely until he had filled the sink with icy cold water and plunged his head in. Every thought rushed out of his mind and was instantly replaced with a powerful feeling of helplessness, isolation and unimaginable cold… Then his face resurfaced, the heat rushed back into his face and the air rushed back into his lungs. He breathed a sigh of relief before grabbing a handful of paper towels and gently drying his face, not wanting to ruin the feelings of peace and serenity that release from the cold water had bestowed upon him. He stood for a minute and breathed in the pungent and yet somehow comforting smell of the bathroom before standing upright, composing himself and exiting back into the diner.

Rachel greeted him with a sad but loving smile as he sat back down.

'You feeling better now,' she asked.

He took a sip of coffee and nodded. 'Yeah, I'm feeling much better thanks. Can't wait to get out of this crummy diner though.'

She nodded slightly, gazing around the yellowed and peeling restaurant. Then from the corner of her eye she saw a man enter the diner and begin a frantic conversation with the man who had spilt coffee on Philip. He looked like a crack head or something, his head swathed in shaggy grey hair and his eyes more bloodshot than a freshly cut steak. She averted her vision suddenly, trying to avoid any attempt at eye contact the weirdo tried to make.

'I'm gonna be worried about the cat whilst we're gone,' Philip said suddenly.

Startled, Rachel turned to face him.

'What? Oh, he'll be fine. Andrew from next door said he'd feed him twice a day.'

'Oh, OK, that's good. Wait. You gave him a key?' he replied anxiously.

'No no, no,' she laughed. 'I told him to just leave the food on his outside windowsill. You reckon that'll work?'

'I don't see why not. He's perfectly capable of catching his own food if not. There are plenty of pigeons around,' said Philip jokingly.

He drank the last of his coffee and stood up. 'Ready to go?'

Rachel drained her cup and stood up, throwing a 5 dollar bill onto their table as she did so.

'Let's go.'

They exited the diner and headed for the car parked on the opposite side of the street.

- - - - -

Geoffrey Simmons eyeballed them suspiciously through the frosted pane window as they did so.

'He the guy that went ape-shit at you?' he asked Gary.

Gary nodded. 'Yeah, but I did spill coffee all over his arm. He's bound to be pissed, I mean, I know I would.'

Geoffrey nodded and thought nothing more of it.

'So, you all ready?' Gary asked, patting his own bag which sat propped up beside him in the red leather clad booth.

Geoffrey nodded. 'Yep. I didn't know how much to bring, so I decided to travel light. How long do you think we'll be staying in Foresbrook?'

Gary shrugged. 'Who knows? The bus may have crashed into a ditch and nobody in Foresbrook has noticed, or equally, they could all be being ritually sacrificed as we speak,' he chuckled darkly.

Geoffrey winced. 'Don't joke about shit like that. Those kids could really be in danger.'

Gary held up his hands. 'I know! And that's why we're going in isn't it?'

'I guess it is,' replied Geoffrey. 'Are we quite finished here? I'm getting kinda sick of this place.'

'But Mr. Simmons, you've been coming to this diner nearly every weekday for the past 5 or 6 years, why change your mind all of a sudden?' The waitress had overheard his last comment and came over to the table.

Geoffrey blatantly and rudely ignored her.

'C'mon Gary, lets get out of here.'

They left the diner and climbed into Geoffrey's car, just as Philip and Rachel's black soft-top drove off into the soft fog that was beginning to settle on the dark and silent streets. Geoffrey started the car and quickly banged the heating on. Both he and Gary smiled as the warm air blew at them gently, warming the cold that they'd picked up in the brief time they were outside.

'Man, that feels good,' sighed Gary, taking off his gloves and placing his hands in front of one of the small, square vents. 'So,' he said as Geoffrey pulled out into the road. 'How you been buddy?'

Geoffrey yawned. 'Just look at me Gary. What the hell do you think?' He revised his harsh reply. 'I've been in a hole for a while. Life isn't really going too well for me at the moment.'

'Women problems?' asked Gary sympathetically.

'Erm, I guess women do come into it yeah. Well, the lack of them that is. I don't really know what to do when I meet women I like these days. It's been so long… For a while I swear I'd forgotten that they even existed!' He laughed dryly. 'That's not the only part though. My job is the same old shit day in, day out. It's a million times less stressful than New York though, I'll tell you!'

Gary nodded and smiled. 'Touché.'

There was silence for a while until Geoffrey turned a corner and pulled out onto a moderately busy motorway.

'I feel like life is flashing before my eyes, and any hopes of having a family are just slipping away. I'm 36 Gary! A 36 year old with only 4 relationships to his name! Call it a midlife crisis or whatever you want, but it's serious and I'm doing what I can to take my mind off it.'

'…like helping me with the school bus investigation,' Gary said, finishing Geoffrey's sentence.

Geoffrey nodded. 'Every time I help someone or solve a murder or whatever, I feel good about myself which makes my existence more bearable.'

'You really need to get some treatment for depression mate,' said Gary, a concerned look in his eyes.

'Yeah, that's what I thought, but I know that I'm not going to get any worse.'

'How?' Gary interrupted.

'I dunno really, I just know. Once we've solved this case, I'm going to sort myself out. It's as simple as that,' he said proudly, smiling to himself.

Gary shrugged. 'Whatever you say Geoff. It's your life.'

Geoffrey nodded. 'Yeah, it is… So what about you mate? How have you been? And why did you come all the way from New York to get _my _help with this case?' It was an obvious question, but one which hadn't crossed his mind until this point.

'I needed a partner for the case and everyone else in my department is a total jackass! So I was passing through Ashfield on my way to Toluca Lake and Foresbrook when I thought, wait a minute, my old buddy Geoffrey lives here! Maybe he'll want to help.'

Geoffrey nodded, now beginning to understand. 'Right, I see… Aww man! And here was me thinking that you wanted my help because I was the best detective in all of both New York _and _Toluca county,' he joked. They both laughed.

Geoffrey sighed. It was good to laugh after not doing so for so long. In fact, it was good to have some company outside of the workplace after not doing so for so long!

He yawned and pulled the car off the motorway and onto a foggy highway that stretched out into the distance. He followed the red lights of the car in front, not wanting to accidentally run off the road and crash into the soggy grassed embankments lining either side.

'So how have you been?' Geoffrey repeated.

'I've been good, well, better than you, ' he laughed. 'I got myself a nice little paperwork job in the office, but couldn't stand being away from the action, so now I'm back being a detective. I've moved away from homicide though, you were right about it being a grisly business. I'm still doing the messed up shit, y'now, stabbings, rapes and whatnot, but I'm sick of murder. I get paid less, but it's worth having less cash to be away from all the death.'

Geoffrey didn't really see the logic. Stabbings left only marginally cleaner crime scenes. The only difference was the lack of a body. Maybe he saw it differently to Gary. Maybe he was _so _desensitized to killing and violence, and that the presence of a corpse didn't affect him at all.

'You have a love life?' Geoffrey added.

'Not really. I had a little fling with a chick from the office, but she was married,' he chuckled.

Geoffrey laughed with him. 'Jesus Gary! You'd better watch who you're shagging! You could end up with some right psycho, meathead husbands on your tail!'

Gary shrugged. 'Hey, she came to me. Clearly I'm irresistible,' he bragged. Geoffrey couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

'Right…' He didn't want to offend his friend in anyway, so suppressed his laughter and kept his comments to himself. 'So how's your boy? He must be what, 11 now?'

- - - - -

Rachel kept glancing over her shoulder nervously, and it was starting to freak Philip out.

'What's the problem Rach?' Philip asked. It was hard enough driving in the fog as it was without her repeatedly fidgeting in the corner of his eye.

'I dunno. That car seems to have been following us for a long time.'

Philip raised an eyebrow. 'So? They're clearly just going in the same direction as us. How do you know it's even the same car in this fog? You must have pretty good eyesight babe.'

She smiled. 'Maybe it's just you that has crappy eyesight,' she chuckled.

'Maybe,' he replied.

The fog suddenly got heavier, and Philip could barely see beyond the headlights.

'Shit! I've got to stop,' he slowed down suddenly.

'No! We don't want the car behind to crash into us,' Rachel yelled as the two yellow orbs of the car behind suddenly appeared very close behind them. Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the fog lessened slightly. They both sighed in relief as the swirling fog passed them and they were left with the original soft, white blanket that had covered the road pretty much continuously throughout the evening. Rachel looked in the rear-view mirror as the car behind began to pull away from them both, and as she did so, got a good look at the passengers; a small balding man with a moustache, and a red eyed, grey haired tramp like figure.

Her eyes widened with fear suddenly.

'Philip! The people in the car behind us! They're the two from the diner,' she whispered, her voice dripping anxiety.

Philip was confused. 'Who?'

'You know. The guy who spilt coffee on you and his tramp friend!'

He looked in the mirror, just catching their faces before they disappeared back into the fog.

'Shit, you're right! What the hell are they doing here?' he asked.

'I don't know. Seems like an unlikely coincidence, don't you think?'

'You think they're out to get us?' he asked. Philip was now on the same train of thought.

'They must be. Why else would they be here?' Rachel replied, beginning to panic.

'Calm down, calm down. OK, we need to try and lose them. It shouldn't be too difficult in this fog,' he began, formulating a plan in his head.

'Don't do anything stupid Philip. We can barely see, and besides, we're on one, straight road. No turnoffs to lose them on. How much fuel do we have left?' she asked, glancing at the dials above the wheel. 'Shit! We're nearly out. Bloody typical.'

Then Philip did something stupid. In a moment of panic he all of a sudden pressed his foot heavily onto the accelerator and began to plough his way through the fog.

Rachel screamed in panic. 'What the hell are you doing? Are you insane?'

Philip gave her a quick, fearful glance. 'Shut up! I know what I'm doing, OK?'

- - - - -

'And in his classes play? What was it…? Exodus, I think or the Nativity… I forget. I think it was –.'

'Shut it Gary! Look,' Geoffrey interrupted, pointing at the car in front. There was a sudden screech of tires as it sped off down the road and towards a small wooded area.

'Holy shit! What do you think? Boy racer?' Gary asked, palming the police badge in his breast pocket.

'I don't know. Could be drunk or high or something. Damn! I wish we were in a squad car; then we could radio for backup and put the siren on,' Geoffrey replied as he banged the gear stick into 5th and began speed after them.

'Maybe we should leave it Geoffrey. We're not even supposed to be here ourselves. Could end up opening a can of worms that I'd rather stay closed, y'now?' Gary said nervously.

Geoffrey gave him a glance of contempt.

'What kind of cop are you, man? That guy is out of control and needs apprehending.'

'Yeah, but the amount of time we'd waste chasing him down and taking him in, how much longer would we be leaving those kids in that school bus?' Gary argued.

Geoffrey could see that he had a point, but couldn't risk letting a felon escape.

'Shouldn't Toluca County or New York State police already have a team looking for the bus? It seems weird that they sent just you to investigate something so big.'

'Geoffrey?' Gary said sheepishly, scratching the back of his head and averting his eyes from Geoffrey's direction. 'There's something you really need to know before we go any further into this whole bus thing.'

Geoffrey shrugged. 'What is it?'

'I was never actually sent to investigate this disappearing bus. In fact, I'm supposed to be at work _right _now,' he revealed.

Geoffrey was so dumbfounded that he nearly went off the road and crashed into a tree.

'What the hell? Why are you so interested in this case that you'd skip work to investigate?'

Gary winced. 'There's more. The reason that there are no other cops on the case is because… is because, the case doesn't exist.'

Geoffrey slammed on the brakes, sending the car into a half spin down the centre of the road and eventually stopping on the wrong lane, facing back down the road where they'd just come from. Philip and Rachel's car raced off around a corner, getting out of sight in less than a second.

Geoffrey sat behind the wheel stiffly, staring aimlessly but sternly through the windscreen. 'Would you like to explain yourself Gary?' he hissed through gritted teeth.

'A couple of nights ago I dreamt about this place called Foresbrook, and then the next day, a school bus goes missing.'

Geoffrey scrunched up his face angrily. 'And the two are connected how?'

'In my dream, a school bus was laying in a ditch, just outside of Foresbrook. I'm sorry Geoffrey. I didn't want to tell anyone on the force because they wouldn't believe me. I knew I had to go and check it out myself.'

'And you thought you'd drag me along for the ride. I see,' Geoffrey spat. 'I can't believe that you're acting on a dream, I mean, are you insane? A dream dammit! A dream!'

'I know, but it was so real. Plus, I had the dream the night _before _I found out about the missing bus,' Gary justified.

'So what? An uncanny coincidence maybe? No! Not even an uncanny coincidence. Just a regular, run of the mill coincidence.' Silence descended on the two suddenly. Geoffrey was the one to break it. 'So anything else you'd like to tell me?'

'Yes! God, you should've let me finish,' Gary said, his voice cracking with stress caused by Geoffrey's inevitable outburst. 'The dream as you say was just a dream, and normally I wouldn't have thought anything of it, but the next day I felt really nauseous. It kind of lingered in my head. Usually dreams fade like, instantly, and you forget most of what you saw, right?' Geoffrey nodded. 'Yeah? Well this one didn't, at all! It stayed really vivid in my head for hours after I woke up, and I couldn't think of anything else. I though it was really weird until I found out about the bus.'

'So what are you saying? That you're psychic?' Geoffrey scoffed.

Gary winced again and shook his head. 'No, definitely not. It felt like someone was reaching out to me. Like they were the psychic one, and had picked me as the recipient of the message, y'now?'

Geoffrey shook his head. 'No, I don't.'

Gary leaped up in his seat and leaned in close to Geoffrey.

'C'mon man! You've got to trust me on this one. Please! You're the only person who I can trust!'

It was Geoffrey's turn to wince. His friend looked truly disturbed.

'Look, I'll drive you to Foresbrook, but then I'm going home,' he started, now calm.

'No Geoffrey! You're needed, don't you see? You said so yourself, you were intrigued by the case but didn't know why. In the ten minutes we spoke earlier today, you went from wanting rid of me because you thought I was going to try and persuade you to come back to New York, to actively volunteering to come with me.'

Geoffrey relaxed a little and thought about it. To all intents and purposes, this was true. Why would he take half of his annual leave to go on what he thought at the time _wasn't _a wild goose chase. Anyone would've have noticed the little discrepancies in Gary's story much quicker than he had. Maybe this was bigger than he thought… Or maybe it was all a crock of shit, much like the rest of his existence. He didn't know. What he did know however, was that if he didn't investigate further, all he would be doing would be returning to his boring, same old same old lifestyle which clearly wasn't working for him. This story was sodden with intrigue and mystery, something new and exciting was happening, and he had to embrace it whilst it lasted.

He shot Gary a sad smile before turning the car round (with great difficulty on such a narrow road; he had no idea how he'd managed to do a handbrake turn on it!) and continuing with their journey.

'So you're going to help me?' Gary beamed.

Geoffrey returned the strangely infectious smile. 'Yeah. I'm going to help you. We'll find that bus together, and hopefully catch up with that other car…' He muttered the last part under his breath, remembering Philip and Rachel's speedy departure.

'Thanks for believing in me,' Gary smiled.

Geoffrey laughed. 'Well, somebody's got to!'


	4. The First Taste of Fear

It was late night when Philip and Rachel arrived in Foresbrook.

After a brief argument over Philips 'evasion tactics', they'd both eventually decided that it had worked, and therefore was the right thing to do. They'd continued down the same road without seeing the fat bloke and the crack head, and although anxious, they were both confident in their escape. The fear of being found by the two weirdoes caught up with them again when they paused for 5 minutes at a petrol station to refuel, but back on the road with a full tank, and still no headlights in the rear-view mirror, they finally felt safe.

'How much longer Phil?' Rachel asked. 'I'm really getting tired now'. She glanced at her watch. It read 11:57. Nearly midnight.

'Not much further I don't think. Only a few miles.' He himself yawned and in doing so, violently swerved the car.

'Shit Philip! You want me to drive?' she asked, clearly concerned that he was going to go off the road and kill them both.

'Erm, yeah, if you don't mind,' he replied wearily. 'It's been a long day for me.'

With the image of the pursuing car still clear in his head, he made a concise effort to pull over and swap seats as quickly as possible. After a brief but carefully executed switch, they were back on the road, this time with Rachel at the wheel.

Philip sighed with relief. 'Thanks babe. I didn't know how much longer I could keep my eyes open for,' he said, beginning to doze off. Rachel prodded him in the face and he opened his eyes. 'What?' he said irritably.

'Stay awake dammit! We're nearly there and I need you to direct me to the right house.'

He bolted upright. 'Oh shit!'

'What is it?' she panicked, the thought of the car being behind them again was the first thing that sprung to mind.

'I can't remember what house it was. Damn… It was like, 21 years ago. Shit!'

Rachel groaned in disbelief. 'Isn't there an address on the letter?'

He shook his head. 'There's nothing. Just the note.'

'God dammit!' she growled, hitting the wheel angrily. 'How the hell are we supposed to find it then?'

Philip shrugged. 'I dunno, I guess we could book into a hotel till tomorrow or something? It would be easier to find by daylight.'

'Oh really? How many hotels do you think will still be open at midnight?' she shot at him sarcastically.

He was beginning to see the dilemma that faced them both. 'We could sleep in the car I guess…'

This did not please Rachel one bit, but she kept her torrents of rage locked inside. Philip could see that she was seething, but as they passed the worn wooden sign depicting the name 'FORESBROOK', he knew that the worst was over for now.

- - - - -

Katie Marlin, as the least injured person was volunteered by her peers to be buses nurse, despite her complete lack of medical knowledge. Mentally she was as distraught and confused as the rest of them, but managed to compose herself knowing that she had to be strong, not only for the others, but for herself.

She brushed her shoulder length blonde hair out from her eyes and began to count once again. There were originally 2 teachers, and 22 students, she knew that much. Now however, both teachers and 7 students were dead. There was no sign of the bus driver. By dropping a pencil on the floor and watching it roll very slowly to one side, she knew that the bus was on a slight tilt, which was barely noticeable, but still significantly more tilted than if they were say, parked on the kerb. Were they off the road?

With the help of some other, mildly injured, strong stomached students, she moved the corpses to the front of the bus and out of the way. There was a lot of groaning, as all 15 of the remaining students, including her, were injured in some way. Using a biro and a page ripped from a science exercise book she'd noted down these injuries, self rating them as serious or minor. She herself was suffering from a biting pain in her side which on closer inspection turned out to be a couple of broken ribs. Other ailments ranged from shattered limbs to deep lacerations, none of which she had the slightest idea of how to treat.

There was a great deal of upset amongst the teenagers but Katie did her best to try and calm them down. To make matters worse, the radio continued to spew out feedback and static at an annoyingly loud volume. To begin with she was creeped out by it, but nearly 3 hours down the line, it was really grating on both hers and the others nerves.

'I'm gonna sort that thing out,' said a tall, well built teen with a deep cut that ran all the way down the side of his face, neck, and onto his shoulder. Before she could stop him, he marched down the bus to the radio and began to stamp on it maliciously. The pitch of the squeal changed suddenly, ascending to a very high frequency but still at the same volume. This sudden change combined with the rhythmic stomping of his heavy hiking boots began to upset the others even more. A girl with a badly twisted leg began to cry.

'Leave it Chris,' Katie said in a distressed tone. 'You're just making things worse.'

'Shut your face!' he barked aggressively, not slowing.

'Leave it for god's sake! It's not going to stop by you stamping on it!' she shouted back at him.

'Yes it bloody well will!' he shot back through gritted teeth.

'Surely you would've at least dented it by now, don't you think?'

Chris stopped and looked at the radio, his lip curling in annoyance. It was just as secure as it had been before his attack, albeit a few skid marks caused by the rubber on his boots. Then, almost as a reward for his efforts, the volume and pitch of the radio decreased to a low buzz, occasionally crackling with life to show them that it was still capable of being as loud as it had been if it so chose.

Chris relaxed and turned back to Katie, smiling wearily.

'It looks like we get a break huh?' he said.

She ignored him and walked over to one of the windows.

'Where the hell are we?' she muttered more to herself than Chris or any of the others.

'I dunno, we could be anywhere in-between school and Toluca Lake, ' Chris began.

Katie shot him a scornful look. 'It doesn't take a genius to work that one out does it?'

Chris blushed. 'Chill out Katie! I'm just trying to help!' he protested, sidling off to an empty seat close to the back of the bus.

'Well try a little harder!' she shouted after him.

She felt a tug on her leg and turned to face a busty, red haired girl with a deep wound just below her stomach. She was lying on the bus seat next to where she was stood in the aisle. 'Cut him some slack Katie. As the – ,' she took a deep breath, with great difficulty it seemed. 'As the fittest people on the bus, you… you need to work together to get us out of, here,' she gasped.

Katie put a finger to the girl's lips. 'Shhh, save your strength.'

The girl opened her mouth to speak again, but decided against it and just quietly lay still, lost in thought. Images of what had happened blossomed in her mind… The kids on the bus were all in her geography set, and they had taken a week out of school to do an investigation of Toluca Lake, such as sediment levels, wildlife… blah, blah, blah. She couldn't help but wish that it was only a one day trip rather than a residential, because at least then there would already be a search party looking for them. As it stood, the school wasn't expecting a call about whether everything was OK or not until tomorrow afternoon, which was hours and hours away. She remembered leaving the school at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon and stopping at a gas station to refuel and so that anyone who wanted to could use the toilet. Then she remembered them all arguing about sleeping arrangements and then… what then? All she remembered after that was waking up in the dark with a gaping hole in her belly. She'd got up, plugged the dripping hole as best as she could with the packet of tissues she always kept in her pocket and then passed out. She'd been drifting in and out of consciousness ever since.

Katie was in another world, she observed, staring blankly out of the window. There was nothing to see other than the glass-like ripple of ice, and beyond that? Just greyness, like a very heavy fog or smoke. But then, her eyes widened suddenly.

'Chris! Come take a look!' she shouted.

Startled, he jumped to his feet and came racing over. 'What is it?'

'There's somebody out there!' She pounded on the window as a skinny silhouette shuffled towards them carrying what looked like a torch on the end of a long rod. The figure must have had a leg injury at some point because it limped horribly and shuffled towards them at an agonisingly slow pace. They squinted through the window as hard as they could, and saw the figure poking at the window with his rod, merely inches from their faces. The light cut a swathe through the icy covered glass, illuminating the darkness which they'd cowered in for hours now; a symbolic ray of hope.

There was only one problem. How the hell was he going to get them out?

The figure continued to pound on the windows trying to find a way in, but was no more capable of doing so than the teenagers on the bus. Then all of a sudden, the figure jumped back from the bus and began to run away.

'Come back!' Chris and Katie yelled, bashing the windows with their fists as hard as they could.

As the light slowly disappeared into the fog, the static on the radio crackled back into life and slowly began to grow in volume. However, it sounded different this time. It was no longer just irritating. It was angry! The screeching became deranged shrieks, and the crackles became so heavy and pronounced that they sounded like gunshots. Every teen on the bus awoke in fear and pressed their hands against their ears to try and block out the sound, but it was useless.

Katie pulled her hands away and could have sworn that behind the hideous wail issuing for the stereo somebody was laughing…

- - - - -

Geoffrey and Gary pulled into a small deserted street and began to make sense of the surroundings. Foresbrook was a surprisingly small town, not small enough to be a village, but very small nonetheless. There was a cluster of rundown bungalows, a high street with a few shops on it, and a very small estate of large semi-detached houses. They wandered down the high street and were very surprised about how quiet it was. Sure, it was the middle of the night, but other than the odd streetlamp there was not a single light in view. At the end of the street was a short road which led down to a relatively large park situated at the edge of Toluca Lake.

'Geoff, where the hell are you man?' Gary yelled into the darkness. It was so difficult to see through both the darkness and the fog without a light.

A shout came from his right. 'I'm over here Gary!'

He followed the sound of Geoffrey's voice into the park and found him perched on a swing that was way too small for him.

'So, we're here,' said Geoffrey. 'You reckon we should wait till morning before beginning our search? There should be a few locals we can quiz, plus we'll be able to see further than a meter in front of us,' he chuckled.

'Yeah, sounds like a good plan. What do you want to do in the mean time? I don't know about you, but I daren't sleep in this town,' Gary replied, taking a seat in the swing next to Geoffrey.

He glanced at his watch. It read 12:19am.

'We could take a look around. Maybe there's some kind of meeting place for the cult, like a church or something.'

Gary nodded. 'The rest of the town is down that way,' he said, pointing along the edge of the lake towards a small forested area. Despite the fog, Geoffrey could see triangular sloping roofs amongst the trees, and as he looked more closely, a small bobbing orb of light.

'Gary! Can you see that?' he gasped, pointing frantically in the direction of the light.

Gary was perplexed. 'What? What are you pointing at?' The light disappeared suddenly.

Geoffrey cursed. 'You missed it! Didn't you see it? Did you see the light?' Gary shook his head as Geoffrey began to run towards the trees. 'C'mon! We'll find it!'

- - - - -

Parked up in a small woodland lane, Philip and Rachel dozed fitfully in the discomfort of the car, occasionally waking up to the sound of an owl hooting, just to fall asleep again.

Philip awoke and rubbed his eyes tiredly. There was a strange crackling noise, but he couldn't tell what it was or where it was coming from. It sounded like the rustling of leaves overlaid with some kind of demonic squealing. It was very faint, but began to get louder.

'What the hell is that noise?' said a sleepy Rachel. She too had been awoken.

'I don't know. It's close though.'

'Really close! Is it something in the car?'

Philip shrugged and glanced around the car, feeling under the seats, the glove box, his pockets, the dashboard, wait! His pockets! He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a handheld radio that was indeed the culprit. A small red light blinked furiously on the front of it, and the tuning needle darted frantically to and fro. He turned it over, but there were no batteries in it.

'Whoa! Déjà vu!' Philip exclaimed. 'Holy crap… Where did this come from?' he asked, holding the radio up so that she could see it.

'How should I know? It was in _your_ pocket,' was her answer. She proceeded to get out of the car and stand shivering in the cold, her warm breath turning to white steam in the air and the light of the car. Philip also got out, but as he did so, the static increased in volume. He was getting irritated by it, so he threw it into the backseat and slammed the door, muting the sound.

'Are you still angry with me?' Philip asked, walking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist.

She tensed, but then relaxed in his hold. 'No, I guess not. I'm sure we'll be able to ask around in the morning or something. It's not a very big town after all.'

He smiled and kissed her on the top of the head. 'I'm sorry,' he chuckled, and she joined in.

They both sat in the brown loamy foliage in front of the car which was softly illuminated by its headlights. Sharing each others body heat they just sat there, lost in their own thoughts. These were soon broken by a muffled scream.

'Phil! Did you here that?' Rachel whispered, eyes wide open.

He nodded. 'Yeah, I did. Shall we go see? We can't just sit here,' Philip replied.

She looked fearful. 'Can't we call the police or something?'

Philip took his mobile out and dialled 911. He put it to his ear and froze.

'_...C-C..A…N….Y-O-U…F…F..FI.N…D..T-T..-HE…B..B…U-US?..._' hissed the voice on the other end through the scream of feedback.

He hung up, looking very confused.

'So? Are you going to call them or what?' It was Rachel, but she seemed so far away. What the hell was the voice doing talking to him through a secure emergency line? He dialled 911 again and listened carefully. But there was nothing. No dial tone. No connection was made.

The scream returned.

'My phone isn't working. We have to go look!' He pointed into the dark woods on his left. 'It came from down there.'

'I think I'm gonna wait in the car,' Rachel shivered, clearly scared out of her mind.

Philip nodded. 'OK, but lock the doors.'

She threw him the small blade she kept in her purse, just in case. 'Be careful. I love you!'

'I love you to…'

Philip disappeared into the woods and as promised, she sat in the passenger seat before locking all the doors and turning the powerful headlights down into a warm glow. She was frightened, but wasn't entirely sure what of. She decided to listen to the radio, but found that she couldn't find a station. It was all static. Frustrated, she rummaged around in the glove compartment before pulling out an old tape and slotting it into the tape player. Soft, sombre rock penetrated the silence and she relaxed, awaiting the return of her beloved boyfriend.

She sat and let herself be absorbed in the music, but then she remembered the radio that Philip found in his pocket. It was now silent, but the red light continued to blink furiously, and she could see it winking at her in the rear-view mirror. She reached round, picked it up and looked at it, perplexed. How was it working with no batteries in it? She was tempted to break it open and look inside, but decided against it. Her favourite song on the tape had begun to play.

- - - - -

The power of the static was rattling the windows in their frames which considering the amount of ice encrusting them, was an amazing feat. Katie screamed for the third time, which could barely be heard amongst the awful screeching of the radio and the groans from her classmates. As she opened her eyes slowly, she saw a figure at the window looking in on them. The ice on that one window seemed to melt away before her eyes, and she screamed once again at what she saw.

Its papery brown skin was filthy, dripping slivers of blood and large clumps of dirt. Its featureless oval face quivered, no, _vibrated _at an inhuman speed. Its straggly arms were pulled behind its head by some kind of invisible force and something seemed to be writhing uncontrollably within its chest, like a demonic baby that had somehow worked its way upwards from the womb …

…but she blinked, and it was gone. The static had also gone, which was a great relief to everyone. She made to sit back down; calm on the outside but hysterical on the inside. She brushed her blonde hair over her eyes, as not to show the others the fear on her face, and was only coaxed out of herself when Chris shook her.

'Katie, look! The window!' he shouted enthusiastically.

She looked and sure enough, the ice was gone from that one window. They could now see the dark silhouettes of the trees in the distance.

'Move. I'm going to smash the bastard!'

Working on autopilot she stood up and moved to a seat opposite, observing Chris as he quickly took off his jumper and wrapped it around his arm. Then, leaning back, he sprung forward and walloped the window with his elbow, close to the centre. It made a loud bang, but didn't break. He winced with pain, but hit it again, harder this time. He felt something crack, but didn't know if it was the window or his arm. With one last effort, he stood back and kicked it with the flat of his heavy boot. There was an ear-splitting smash, and the glass was blasted out into the woods.

The moment he broke the window, a hideously cold wind swept into the bus, chilling every child to their core. Chris hastily put his jacket on, and deftly vaulted the sill. Katie followed suit, remaining silent.

They both dropped onto the forest floor and looked around.

'Shit it's cold!' Chris trembled, shivering despite the jacket.

Katie ignored him. She was too focused on the small scrap of red paper she saw lying on the ground next to her foot, directly when the monster had been standing only minutes before. It was held down by a small rock, so she brushed this aside before picking it up. She gasped as she read:

"_Think not why I imprisoned you, but why I let you out. Roger xxx'_


	5. Pop goes the Weasel

Geoffrey and Gary jogged at a relatively slow, but consistent pace through the newly discovered housing estate buried in what they'd thought was a small group of trees. The light still hadn't reappeared and Gary was started to think it never would.

'We've lost it Geoff,' he panted. He was terribly unfit and knew it.

'Yeah, I think we… wait! Over there!' Geoffrey stopped and pointed into the blackness of the woods. There it was, the quivering bobbing orb. It was heading straight for them. 'Hide!' hissed Geoffrey, ducking behind a tree and waiting for the light. Gary followed his advice and crouched behind a large bush.

Waiting for what seemed like an eternity, they were finally rewarded with the faint cracking of twigs and soft pitter-patter of footsteps in the loamy earth. Gary's hand went into his jacket and he produced a standard issue handgun, its silver barrel glinting slightly as the light came closer. Then came the rattling; a subtle tinkling that was hard to hear, even in the deathly silence.

'Have to warn the patriarch… people… bus… does _he _want them?' came the neurotic, croaky muttering of a decrepit old man who was anxiously hobbling directly towards their position.

Geoffrey turned to Gary and gave him the signal; the word 'bus' lodged in his mind. This man knew something.

It all happened very fast.

Gary jumped up and pointed the gun at the old man whilst simultaneously; Geoffrey leaped up behind him as he walked past and gagged him with a strip of cloth torn from his shirt. Not an orthodox procedure for two police officers, but they weren't exactly in a normal situation.

For a bony old skeleton, the old man was strong! He wriggled and writhed like a dying snake, and it took both of them to pin him down and tie his hands together with another piece of Geoffrey's shirt.

'Looks like we're gonna be doing the bad cop, bad cop routine,' Geoffrey whispered to himself.

They hauled the beggar to his feet and Gary picked up the source of the light; a curious glass lamp on the end of a pole with a small bell attached to it. Using it to guide their way, they hauled the man into a deserted clearing near the lake before pulling the rag from his mouth.

'One word and I blow your brains out. You speak, when spoken to, you hear me? When you do speak, you do it quietly,' Gary hissed in a surprisingly assertive voice.

The old man trembled, wiping sweat from his brow with a dirty wrist. He was in a sorry state. Dressed in what looked like an oversized filthy poncho, the only visible parts of his body were his frail, wrinkled hands and ugly, bald head. This bobbed as a response to Gary's command.

Geoffrey took over. 'I heard you mentioned a patriarch. A patriarch to what?' he asked.

The old man shook with fear. 'Nobody speaks of them. No. _He _will find us. We are allowed to live here whilst their seedy dealings go on beneath our noses. We speak to them only to deliver the divine message.' He quivered anxiously. 'I must go. There is trouble afoot!'

Geoffrey held the trembling man steady. 'You're not going anywhere. What is your name?'

The old man shook his head. 'No, no, no. The knowledge of the birth name gives the conjurer supreme power over the being. How can I trust that you are not with them?' he whispered shakily. 'They have eyes and ears everywhere.'

Gary raised an eyebrow. This guy was nuts! He prodded him in the face with the gun.

'Tell me about the Cult of Toluca Lake.'

The crazed man shook his head violently. 'No, this is often mistaken because of the spread of disease… There is no Cult of Toluca Lake, it is a myth. Only a small sect is present here in this town. Foresbrook is not the source of the decay. You have come to the wrong place.'

Geoffrey was intrigued. 'So if the 'decay' doesn't come from Foresbrook _or _Toluca Lake, where does it come from?'

The old man took a hasty glance into the woods around them and sighed deeply.

'I tell you this under the guise that you will help put an end to it!' Gary and Geoffrey both nodded, humouring the man. 'If you follow the lakes edge for 10 miles, you will arrive in the town of Silent Hill. From there you should have no problem finding the source… Few have entered and survived.'

Gary laughed. 'You crazy old bastard! We don't care about your insane stories! We want to find a bus of school children which may have crashed in these parts; nothing more.'

The old mans face fell. 'Then I shall help you no more.' And with that he totally clammed up, even after various shakes, prods, slaps and a totally unnecessary pistol whip from an irritated Gary Lawson. The man seemed to slip into some bizarre trance of some kind, because he just sat and stared into space, totally ignoring both of them.

'Let's leave,' Gary suggested, lowering the gun.

'The minute our backs are turned he's going to run off and tell the 'patriarch'. We both heard him!' Geoffrey protested, suspiciously eyeballing the old man.

'That's a chance we'll have to take Geoff. We can't sit here with him all night! We've got to find the damn bus! Now! Look Geoff, when he was coming towards us he mentioned a bus, so if we walk back the way he came, we're sure to be on the right trail.'

Geoffrey was impressed by his enthusiasm. 'What happened to waiting till morning?' he asked.

'That was a good plan, but we know where it is already?'

'No we don't!' protested Geoffrey.

'Well we've got a bloody good lead, don't you think?' Gary was adamant that they went. 'How about I go check it out and you stay here with this crazy bastard. Good plan?'

Geoffrey bit his lip. He really didn't want to spend a long period of time alone with this nutcase. He could be potentially dangerous, and what if he had people out looking for him?

The man opened his eyes suddenly and a strange gurgle seemed to manifest itself in Geoffrey's head, overwhelming him with a huge, absurdly irrational feeling of absolute terror. His jaw dropped open and his eyes opened wide in anguish.

Gary turned to him scared by Geoffrey's seemingly random breakdown. 'Geoff? What is it? What's wrong?'…

…_it was a bright summer's day, and young Geoffrey was in the meadow behind his house playing with Kip the dog. The dog did not belong to him, but always seemed to be out in the fields when Geoffrey wanted to escape Mommy. They were both friends and spent lots and lots of time together…_

'_Kip, why does my Mommy bully my Daddy so much? He loves us doesn't he? He's doing his best.'_

_Kip sprawled himself out under a large bush and pondered this. 'I don't know young Geoffrey. Some people are just born bad I suppose. Your mother is a real bitch!' he growled._

_Geoffrey gasped. 'Don't be rude, potty mouth!'_

_Kip smiled and bounded over to him. 'I'm sorry Geoff, please don't be mad! Let's go play down by the stream.'_

_And so they did; two friends galloping through the long grass on a warm sunny day, full of laughter. As they splashed in the stream, Geoffrey forgot all about Mommy and Daddy, but as darkness began to fall, he knew he had to go back…_

…he woke up in the same spot as before, only this time he was lying on the ground, a pounding headache smashing through his skull. Dragging himself to his feet, all he could hear was the gurgling. It sounded like a cross between someone eating a chunk of raw meat and a large animal choking to death on its own blood. He looked around but there was nobody in sight. Gary and the old man were gone, that's for sure. A gust of wind blew up suddenly and he huddled to himself, putting his hands in the pockets of his jacket. When it died down again, he withdrew his hands, and there was a small piece of red paper clutched in his hands. It read:

'_Did you know that when your Daddy robbed your house, he killed Kip? Your Daddy was a nasty burglar! Roger xxx'_

Confused, Geoffrey began to reminisce. Back in a time before his mother killed herself, he remembered having a dog called Kip. It was a small Alsatian, but jet black. He remembered that the dog used to talk to him, which was clearly his imagination. Did Kip even exist at all? A small, black Alsatian seemed like a very strange dog indeed. More importantly, what the hell was with this note? Who wrote it and how did they know about his oldest, most forgotten about memories? Dumbfounded, he put it down to exhaustion. He decided to put it in his pocket and if it was still there when he was sure he was mentally stable, then he could worry about.

Now for the more pressing issue: Where the hell was Gary?

- - - - -

Philip could see the dim headlights of the yellow school bus, and as he ran towards it, he could see two figures stood by a broken window; a tall, well built boy, and a blonde, leggy girl who was looking very close to traumatised for some unknown reason. The boy didn't seem to have noticed this. He jogged over to where they stood.

'Jesus Christ! What happened?' Philip asked, looking the bus over.

Chris shrugged. 'I dunno! He woke up in there and just managed to get out like, 5 minutes ago. Can you help us? Where are we?'

'In Foresbrook, about half a mile from the town… How many of you are there?' Philip was dumbfounded.

'There's a few', said Chris. He'd not been bothered to count how many there were altogether. 'The rest are all injured though. Do you have a working phone? We really need help, fast!'

Philip shrugged and made his way over to the smashed window for a better look. 'Jesus this is fucked up… No, my phone isn't working. It's some kind of static interference or something. If you both come with me we can go back to the town and get some help. It's over this way,' Philip replied, gesturing back the way he'd come.

Although hesitant, Katie and Chris began to follow him. Was leaving their injured classmates the right thing to do?

'Can we hurry up a bit? We don't want to leave them for too long,' Katie asked.

Philip nodded. 'Yeah, we can take my car. It's parked in a lay-by not far from here.'

- - - - -

Dozing off in a haze of soft, melodic pianos and acoustic guitars, Rachel felt luxuriously relaxed and calm. But there was a niggling in the back of her mind, something telling her to open her eyes and turn off the stereo. This feeling increased, and reluctantly, she fully sat up and opened her eyes. Something was tinkling gently and she turned to see a small key on a piece of string dangling from the heating vent. Looking at it made her head hurt and a huge feeling of anxiety seemed to envelop the whole car like a sodden blanket. She suddenly wanted to get out, but couldn't seem to find the handles. Images flashed through her head; meaningless and unconnected, but scary nonetheless. She concentrated hard, trying to capture an image for one second, just figure out what it was… but to no avail. The fleeting thoughts did not want to be caught.

Then as quickly as they appeared, the daydreams faded, and she was left only with her music and the warm air. Then with a hiss of static, her tape melted in the player and instead, a nursery rhyme began to play, sung by a choir of children…

'_Half a pound of tuppenny rice,_

_Half a pound of treacle,_

_That's the way the money goes,_

_Pop! Goes the weasel._

_Up and down the City road,_

_In and out the Eagle,_

_That's the way the money goes,_

_Pop! Goes the weasel'_

Severely freaked out, she switched it off and tried to scrape the tape out with a broken windscreen wiper which Philip forgotten to throw away when they'd bought some new ones a few weeks previously. However, the tape was firmly filling the gap, and there was no way it could be removed without taking the whole thing apart. How had this happened? Faulty wiring? Just in case it was, she switched the engine off to avoid a possible electric shock, and began to think over how she was going to tell this to Philip. Suddenly she saw something in the mirror, and the icy finger of terror began to trace its way down her spine. There was somebody in the back seat.

- - - - -

Geoffrey wandered blindly through the woods. What was he looking for? Gary could be anywhere. He cursed his idiotic behaviour and decided to find his way back to the car before planning his next move. As he did so a thought stuck him. Silent Hill! That was the town he'd been trying to remember earlier! All the information he'd gradually soaked up over the years began to solidify in his mind. The old man was right. There was no Cult of Toluca Lake, but there _was _a cult in Silent Hill. Some kind of ritual sacrifice had been interrupted. What was it… The burning of a child? He knew he'd have no way of remembering her name. All he remembered was that they were interrupted somehow and it ended up on record. There were no arrests made though… He remembered also that there was another case related to Silent Hill which was drug related, but he couldn't really remember that one either.

Eventually he stumbled through the bracken and emerged back in the park. He walked across the edge of lake and found the car parked where he left it. He opened the door and sat inside, the only sound being the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. He felt drunk, like although many weird things were happening, it could all wait until tomorrow… Nothing was too weird because he didn't know what was real and what was not. There was no sense of urgency, so he locked the doors, crawled onto the backseat, and drifted off into a surprisingly gentle and comforting sleep…

- - - - -

Philip, Katie and Chris arrived at the secluded road, and Philip crumpled to the ground. Secretly, deep down he'd almost _expected _Rachel to be gone by the time he came back, but he didn't listen.

'What's up man?' Chris asked as Philip began to sob uncontrollably at his feet.

'She's gone… I knew she'd be gone, but I didn't listen, why didn't I listen?'

He ran over to the car and threw open the door, hoping that she was under a seat or something… Irrational thoughts, but he didn't care! He had to explore every possibility. He saw a key hanging from the heating vent, a small piece of red paper attached to it. He retrieved the note and began to read:

'_Hi, little brother! It's me, Roger! I saw Rachel sitting all alone in the car, so I took her to visit Mom, because Mom hasn't seen Rachel in a long time. Mom is ill, Philip. She's at the hospital in Brookhaven. Come and see us! Roger xxx'_

Philip raised his eyebrows and his tears dried. What the hell was going on? Rachel would have waited for him for sure, but he found it absurdly unlikely that his own brother had abducted her. He decided to trust the note and started the engine, fumbling for a map of Toluca Lake in order to find which direction the hospital would be found.

'Hey, what are you doing? Are you taking us to the town or what?' Chris asked rather rudely. Katie made this evident by sharply elbowing him in the ribs.

Philip seemed to be in another world. 'Errm, yeah. There isn't really anything in Foresbrook, just a few shops. I'm gonna drive to Brookhaven Hospital though. It's not far and seems like a much better place to go considering the circumstances.' He hid the key and the note, but he didn't know why.

Katie was wary about getting into the car, but was soon persuaded by Chris's jostling and impatience.

'C'mon let's go! Peoples lives are at stake.'

Philip started the engine and pulled out into the dark and empty road; Rachel, his mother, Roger and the strange key were prominent in his mind. Since when was his mother ill? He'd visited her only a couple of weeks beforehand and she seemed to have nothing wrong with her then, plus, if she was going into hospital, she most definitely would have told him so. Unless of course, she couldn't, which would imply that she was badly injured, and the note that Roger left was far too upbeat for that to have been a possibility. How were they visiting her when it was nearly 1 o'clock in the morning? What was going on? Ever since they'd set foot from the diner, things were going wrong. There was something creepy and malevolent about the atmosphere that was extremely foreboding, and yet, almost enticing. The key seemed to be giving off a strange vibe; the kind of feeling one gets when they're having a nightmare about something that is not at all scary. It was a simple object that could not harm him, but he fought the compulsion to wind down the window and throw it away. He shoved it into the bottom of his deepest pocket, but it still burned a hole in his mind. Then there was the radio on the passenger seat. Katie and Chris were sat in the back and therefore could not see the light, but as before, the small red LED blinked furiously, niggling away at his peripheral vision. At least it was no longer emitting static. That small fact was some kind of comfort even if he didn't know why. He tried to forget about the strange goings on by engaging in small talk with the two teenagers.

'So, what were you guys doing on the bus? School trip?'

Katie was miles away, but snapped back to reality as Philips voice cut through the silence

'Yeah, we were heading towards Toluca Lake on a geography residential trip kind of thing.'

Chris cut in. 'We were supposed to be looking for wildlife and taking core samples of the soil and crap like that. I wish I'd never taken it as a subject to be honest. Plus, look what it's gotten us into!'

Philip laughed dryly. 'Yeah. I was supposed to be taking a holiday with my girlfriend. We came here to visit my brother and my father, but I couldn't remembered which house they lived at, so we were going to spend the night in the car and search for it in daylight, but I heard screams so I went looking in the woods and I found you guys.'

Katie felt sympathetic towards Philip. 'Where is your girlfriend now?' she asked.

Philip winced at the question. 'I don't know. I think she's already at the hospital.' He decided to tell them about the note. 'My brother left me a note saying that they'd both gone to the hospital to visit my mum, who's apparently a patient there, but that's the first I've heard of it.'

Chris was now as confused as Philip. 'But, why didn't they wait for you? How did your brother even know you were here, or where you were parked? That little woodland road seemed pretty secluded to me.'

Philip shrugged. 'I dunno! I have no idea what's going on, but that's why I'm off to the hospital; to find out. You two can get some paramedics and take them back to the bus. I won't be needed.'

Katie frowned. 'I guess not. Thank you very much for helping us anyway.'

Philip once again seemed to drift off into space. 'It's no problem…'

They carried on driving in silence, Philip occasionally glancing at the map to make sure he was travelling in the right direction. Looking up from the map, he noticed that a colourless block had filled the cassette slot on the stereo, and he noticed from the label on the side that it was Rachel's favourite tape, which had somehow fused, or even _melted _to the inside of it. He decided not to scare Katie and Chris further by telling them about either that, or the other weird things that he'd experienced; they were shell-shocked enough as it was.

He dug the key out of his pocket again and careful not to crash the car, looked at the small circular inscription on its handle. The inscription had been carefully carved and filled with some kind of blood red ink. There were two circles, one large one with a smaller one inside of it, and there were various patterns in this border, the only distinguishable one being an eye of some kind at the top. Within the circle were three smaller circles arranged into a triangular shape, and he counted four other symbols, 3 in-between each circle, and one in the middle. Puzzled, he put it back in his pocket and concentrated on the road.

Before long, buildings began to flank the road and soon enough, they arrived outside a collection of squat, white walled buildings surrounded by a dull and empty car park. The hospital seemed to be void of life, and the whole of Brookhaven seemed to be covered with the same thick, white fog that Foresbrook was. The irrational discomfort and anxiety they all felt hadn't decreased either. Whatever was present in Foresbrook was also present here…


	6. Brookhaven Hospital

Katie was thinking of home; her mum, her dad, her little sister Mary… It all seemed so far away as she walked through the doors of an unknown building in an unknown town with a boy she rarely spoke to and a man she'd met only 30 minutes beforehand. She knew almost as soon as she stepped through the door that they weren't going back to the bus with a team of paramedics. In short, the hospital was empty. There were no people outside, no people inside, no lights, no cars, no ambulances, no nothing. The whole place was illuminated by a soft, grey light which seemed to come from the fog, so even though it was the middle of the night, they could see quite easily.

Philip marched into the hospital lobby and methodically jumped over the reception counter, opening files and folders with a very serious and concentrated look on his face.

'What are you looking for?' Katie asked, sidling over to him and rubbing her bare arms in an attempt to keep warm.

Without even looking, Philip took off his jacket and tossed it to her. 'Put this on or you'll freeze to death. It's bloody cold in here.'

She smiled sadly. 'Thanks.'

Chris was trying all the doors, but not one would open. They were all locked or jammed shut somehow. Many of the doors that were jammed resembled the door of the school bus; the frame had somehow moulded itself to the door in a grotesque, almost sexual manner. He began to get frustrated. Every door was locked!

Suddenly there was a loud bang, and the large double doors that they'd entered through slammed shut violently. All three of them jumped out of their skins, Katie letting out a short, shrill scream. Then the most bizarre of things happened. Unseen forces in the walls reached out around the door, melting and fornicating with its pristine white glow. The door seemed to pulse as it fused with its frame, and this glow seemed to spread throughout the lobby, instilling fear into their very cores, though they didn't quite know why. The light seemed to dim, and they knew that the hospital did not want to let them go.

Chris ran over to Philip and Katie, not wanting to be alone during this peculiar transition. Philip glanced around fearfully before continuing with his search of the documents, increasing his pace like they had to leave fast.

'Find a door guys! We have to leave here, soon!' Philip whispered urgently. The very air seemed to vibrate, but they could see each other very clearly like it was the world that was changing and not their fragile minds.

'What the hell is happening?' Chris asked, running his hand through the air, noticing how it became distorted. His hands were aflame with a colourless fire it seemed, and as the glow in the walls increased they began to burn.

Philips eyes opened wide. He'd seen this before in his dreams. Was he dreaming now?

Strange sounds began entering their heads, innate instinct causing them to huddle together in the corner furthest from the entrance, which seemed to be the epicentre of the chaos. The small television at the reception desk exploded into life, white noise adding to the insane sounds they were hearing. Katie fell to the floor with her hands pressed tightly against her ears, and was the first to witness the light green lino crumble, blacken and float off into the air as ash. She looked up and saw a similar thing happening to the walls, and ceiling to. Chris and Philip ducked down behind the counter with her, hands over their heads in one last protective stance. Then the light disappeared completely…

…When he awoke, a stale, putrid smell invaded Philips nostrils. He opened his eyes and saw that nothing had changed. This was certainly not a dream. He was standing on a rusty iron mesh which covered the entire floor. Underneath it was pure blackness; an endless abyss. The walls were draped with white, blood stained sheets and pulling one aside he saw that wire mesh was beneath that also. He stood up and looked around, trying to take in the frightening and dramatic change that had happened to the previously dull and featureless hospital lobby. There was no sign of either Chris or Katie, which deeply worried him. They had to be found.

Stepping out from behind the desk he began to calm himself down using a series of deep breathing exercises. He noticed that all of the doors were still jammed shut, but there was a corridor to his left that led deeper into the hospital. He looked at the folder he still had clutched in his hands. There was a map underneath the burnt and blackened pages, and he wondered why it alone had remained in such good condition. He still had no idea which room his mother was supposed to be in, and now that all of the files had mysteriously burnt, he knew that he would just have to look for it himself.

'I was led here,' he mused. 'Roger led me here… Did he know that this was going to happen?' He continued down the hallway, and was greatly disturbed by the strange things that he saw: tables with what looked like burnt human remains on them, empty wheelchairs that were splashed with blood, brutally oversized knives and surgical scissors. He picked up what looked like a large meat cleaver, and feeling its weight in his hand, felt much better.

Next to where he'd found the knife was a door that was ajar. Every other door he'd come across was locked or jammed, but this one was already open. Tentatively, he entered, and was horrified by what he saw.

- - - - -

Katie awoke in what looked and smelled like a damp, fetid cellar of some kind. The walls were greasy with fungus and the floor was ankle deep in stagnant water. She leaped to her feet and brushed away the filthy moss that was clinging to her sodden clothes.

'Chris? Philip?' she called out into the darkness. The only reply was an echo. After it had subsided she listened carefully. There was a sound that she couldn't quite make out. It sounded like a siren of some kind, and was coming from above her. It was an air raid siren! The ones that warned the British of invading bombers during the Second World War. They wailed mournfully in the distance, and she couldn't help but feel very scared by them. She'd always found them haunting, and they seemed to fit the mood of the scene very well.

The cold draughts and echoes began to make her think that she wasn't in a cellar at all, but perhaps some kind of underground tunnel. She squinted into the darkness but couldn't see much; just flat grey walls either side of her and blackness in front and behind her. She looked up at the ceiling, thinking that there would be a trapdoor or hole that she'd fallen through, as she had no idea how she'd got from the hospital lobby to an underground tunnel, but there was none. She was very confused, very scared, and very cold. She was also beginning to feel very grateful that Philip had given her his coat, especially when a suddenly blast of cold air swept through the tunnel.

She couldn't decide which way to walk. Each way was as silent and black as the other, and she had no idea where either of them went. She decided to just take a chance, and began walking down the left hand tunnel.

As she plunged further and further into the darkness, another noise began to prickle her ears, and this sounded a lot more disturbing. It sounded like the rhythmic grinding of a large piece of machinery. A steady pounding echoed through the chamber combined with a grating squeal, not like the static, but like rusted cogs that were forced to work together despite the discrepancy. The dirty pumping made her want to turn and go the other way, but she was getting very tired, the cold water sapping the strength from her limbs, and she could see a faint light in the distance. She aimed for the light. Spurred on by a new found strength, she ploughed through the water, sloshing it all up her body, but not really caring about the added cold.

The light was closer than she'd first thought because it was coming from a keyhole. She'd finally reached the end of the tunnel! The door was small from what she could tell by feeling around the edge, and everything else around it was just flat wall. The door was the only way through but it was locked. Feeling cheated and dejected she slumped against the door and began to sob with frustration. She'd buried her hands deep into the pockets of Philips jacket and suddenly she was overcome by a horrible feeling of dread. Her hand curled around a small object and when she drew it out, she saw with what little light there was that it was a tiny key. Could it possibly fit the lock? Surely not. However she gave it a go and when the door swung open she was overcome by disbelief.

She entered the brightly lit room and as she did so the door swung shut and slammed behind her. She squinted at the light and noticed that she was in some kind of bathroom. She headed for the door and exited onto a train platform. She was in a subway; although how she got there from the hospital she had no idea. The light was dim, but at least she could see. She walked over towards the tracks, conscious of her boots echoing loudly around the station, and looked down both sides of the tunnel. When she'd awoken was she in a subway tunnel? She couldn't begin to comprehend how she'd have felt if a train had come at her.

She sighed and sat on a bench, still freezing from the cold gusts of air that were billowing around her. She decided to wait for a train, get a ride back to Brookhaven and visit the hospital again. In a now ordinary situation, she couldn't help but question whether or not what had happened had really happened at all. Maybe she'd been drugged and then dumped in the train toilets or something… She didn't know…

_Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump…_

The rhythmic pounding of the strange machinery came again from nowhere. She didn't remember it stopping at any point, but the fact that it had just started up again made it abundantly clear that it must have done at some point. She leapt up from the bench and turned around in a full circle, trying to pinpoint the noise. It was coming from behind a red set of double doors to her far left. She ran over to them and flung them open, expecting to see some kind of demonic factory, but to no avail. Instead, a strange humanoid lay crouched on the floor, twitching uncontrollably. It seemed to be tied across a vending machine that had been tipped over and dragged to the centre of the room and its legs were spread apart in a macabre sexual position. Brown blood was gushing from some unseen wound, and the grating sound that she'd mistaken for rusted metalwork was actually the monsters ghostly wails. She wanted to feel sorry for the brutal torture, but the creature was so frightening that all she could do was press herself into the nearest corner and watch, eyes open wide with horror. The monster had a strange cylindrical head that thrashed around uncontrollably, the only distinguishable feature being a large steely pair of maroon lips that opened and closed in rapid succession. Its arms, or rather, upper body limbs were splayed out over the vending machine and had been cruelly nailed to it with some kind of large iron peg. Instead of hands, the creature had a large pair of dirty talons that sprouted straight from the wrists, and these flopped around on the ground making harsh clinking noises and tearing chunks of concrete out from under the shabby carpet.

The creature squirmed and bellowed out another mournful wail. In response, another noise from down the corridor to her left started up. A slow kind of '_Thump, Scrape, Thump, Scrape' _that increased in volume as whatever it was got closer. In terror, but with a morbid curiosity that seemed to bypass her survival instincts, Katie inched her way towards the edge of the wall, peering round as to get a better view of the source of the noises. She tried to suppress a squeal.

A tall, humanoid wearing some kind of triangular steel helmet was clomping its way towards her. Its hefty muscled right arm dragged behind it a huge rusted knife or cleaver of some sort, and iron links of chains hung from the helmet and were dragged along on the floor behind it.

She ducked back around the corner, trembling with fear, eyes darting to and fro in the search for some kind of hiding place. In the end she hid behind a pile of crates, out of view from the Pyramid Head, although there was a tiny crack between two boxes which she could see out from. The Pyramid Head came stomping around the corner, dragging its massive blade along behind it, and it stopped at the restrained monsters feet. Its cylindrical head twisted side to side in an attempt to see the monstrosity stood behind it, and it gargled grotesquely as the Pyramid Head put on foot on the edge of the vending machine, lifted the knife, and plunged it deep into the unseen gap in-between the monsters legs, perhaps as some kind of sick, ritual rape. The monster didn't scream in agony like she expected it to, but rather belched forth a sigh of sorts, some perverted sense of relief or pleasure from the Pyramid Heads evil sacrifice.

The monster was no victim, just a disgusting sacrifice. Was she the victim? Was the whole event orchestrated specifically or her to see? The Pyramid Head pulled the knife out of the corpse's anus with a sickening squelch, and its rusted metal helmet turned to face the crates which she was hidden behind. She tensed with fear. Had she been discovered? The executioner stood up and turned its whole body to face her. She must have been seen. She knew it was only a matter of time before she too was murdered by that massive knife, so she quickly searched for an exit. There were the red double doors she'd entered through, the corridor that the Pyramid Head had come from, and another set of double doors, these blue, near to the crates. She new that they were the best option, but that she would be done for if the doors were locked. Alternatively she could try and dash past the Pyramid Head and go down the tunnel it had come from, although, she had no idea what was down there either. It would however give her more room to breathe. Perhaps. Maybe she was underestimating its speed, if so there was no way she could get past it.

She was running out of time. It was getting closer. She pondered for one minute and finally made her decision. Just as the Pyramid Head was right next to the stack of crates she kicked them harshly, causing them to cascade around it. In a moment of confusion it tensed, lifting the knife and spinning around to her direction. It gave her enough time to dart around it and down into the corridor which whence it had came. Unfortunately she _had _underestimated its speed because although she didn't slow one jot, the Pyramid Head was already gaining on her, knife in hand. At the end of the corridor was a small steel spiral staircase which descended into darkness once more, but almost as some kind of lifeline, a torch stood on the flat banister at the top. Thanking her good fortune she sped down the stairs, grabbing the torch as she did so and half expecting the Pyramid Head to be at her heels. She didn't dare look though, so she just kept running and running and running, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the subway…

- - - - -

Philip was truly sickened by the sight that lay in front of him. The dismembered corpse of a nurse lay splayed out on a hospital bed, face smashed beyond recognition, lower abdomen dissected in some kind of sick, hysterectomy. All around her lay tables and tables covered with more unnecessarily brutal tools; knives, saws, axes, even a power drill, all rusted beyond use and caked in dry blood. He could see that the nurse had been carrying a chart before, before _this _had happened to her, so he carefully removed it from her grasp, doing his best not to throw up. He looked at the list:

_Flora Davies – Room 407_

_Elizabeth Morris – Room 19_

_George Rosten – Room 35_

_Gary Lawson – Room 79_

_Jimmy Stone – Room 163_

_Dahlia Snow – Room 201_

_Jack Cumberland – Room 311_

Taking the map of the hospital from his pocket he found where room 201 was and marked it with a spot of blood which he reluctantly dipped his finger into. The room was 3 floors up, and so far he hadn't seen any stairs that he could use. Just as he was about to leave the room, the nurse violent began to shake, and a disgustingly low death rattle burned its way out from her rotted face. Philip turned and faced the corpse with a mixed look of horror and fear on his face. He tightly gripped his knife and slowly edged out of the door, closing it behind him. Suddenly there was a snake like hiss and he spun around to see a second nurse with an equally butchered face and lower abdomen leering at him evilly. He recoiled down the hall away from it, but saw that it clearly had hostile intentions towards him. Nurse 'Riley' according to the name badge lifted a short but solid looking lead pipe and began to stalk down the corridor towards him, hissing malevolently as it did so…

_...daddy was in hospital getting his stomach pumped again because he drank too much again. Roger and mommy both had to carry him to the car, and I sat in the front with mommy whilst Roger helped daddy in the back. He was shouting at us, saying that his little club were the only people that understood him. Mommy did not like his little club, because they did weird stuff, and scary men in big black dresses kept coming to our house looking for him, but mommy was like, 'he doesn't live here anymore so go away!'…_

…and it was suddenly much closer to him than it was before, nearly in striking distance. Philip jumped back and readied his knife/meat cleaver weapon, wishing he'd chosen one with a more pronounced point. The nurse hissed again, but this was cut short when Philip slammed the blade into the remains of its face with a meaty wallop. The nurse cringed away from him and began to spasm uncontrollably, like some kind of malfunctioning robot. Philip reached over and yanked the blade out, but the nurse was not finished yet. It grabbed his wrist with surprising speed and squeezed with surprising strength. Philip yelled as the nurses crusty hands dug into his skin, and raising a boot, stamped hard on the side of its head, forcing it to the floor. The nurse struggled feebly as he crushed its head beneath his foot like a rotten egg, greyish green, stinking matter splurging out all over the floor beneath it. He reluctantly bent down and retrieved his knife from the sticky mess, just as the first nurse somehow managed to open the door of the room he'd entered only minutes before, brandishing a small but deadly looking scalpel. This time ready, he leapt forward and slashed the nurse across its chest, spilling more of the green grey mess. The nurse shrieked and clutched at her breast, swinging widely with the blade. Philip kept way out of reach, as he had not idea how many deadly germs would get into his blood stream if he let it touch him. Throwing a table in front of him to slow the nurse's progress, he began to jog away from it, loosely following his memory of the map towards some nearby stairs.

Entering yet another deserted corridor he began to wonder whether or not he'd taken another wrong turning, but unwilling to stay in one place long enough for the nurse to catch up with him, he continued to blindly run around the vast halls of the hospital. Suddenly as he turned a corner he saw a figure in the distance. His first instinct was that it was a nurse, but it wasn't. This time it was much, much worse. Chris was dead. He must have been caught by the deranged hospital staff and split in half right there and then in the hospital. He sunk to his knees next the poor boy and wept a few tears of loss. It was such a terrible crime for a young life to be taken, and the realisation that his girlfriend and his mother were somewhere in this building made him all the more worried.

He picked the small scrap of red paper that was pinned to Chris's face and began to read.

'_Philip. Come on! We've been waiting for hours for you to come. Its past visiting hours put I'm friends with the staff here so I managed to pull a few strings, you know how it is. Anyway, stay away from rooms 35 and 163. Jimmy and George are a proper pair of assholes! I don't want you to meet them little brother. _

_Hurry up! We miss you! xxx' _


	7. Beyond the Town Hall

…_Frederick Baldwin was a very troublesome teen, always being told off by the police for vandalising people's property, criminal damage and drug abuse. His two lowlife friends Gregory Thornhill and Robert York were just as bad, and throughout the town they were both feared and despised. Anyone different was immediately at risk, as the boys were incredibly prejudice against anyone of a different race, sexual orientation or historic background. They liked to think themselves as an elite vigilante force, taking pleasure in inflicting pain on those that they deemed as deserving their brutal punishment. One day however, they took it too far. _

_Ivan Simmons was a lonely man, and after the death of his wife spent the majority of his time with his young son Geoffrey. He'd never hurt anybody, but he was singled out by the 3 boys. A sick burglar whose calling card was to kill every pet in the house was at large, and Frederick Baldwin was one of his victims. After his beloved greyhound Trevor was found beheaded and hung by his back legs from the washing line. Frederick's first reaction was to blame someone, and when Ivan's name was subtly brought up as a rumour, the 'shit hit the fan' as they say…_

…Geoffrey was awoken by a strange scratching noise that seemed to be on ground level, and slowly getting closer to the car. He sat up and looked out of the window into the darkness. The fog seemed angrier than it had been before, and with a clear head he began to feel both frightened and confused about the changes that were going on around him. There was no sign of Gary, and he knew that he'd been out for at least an hour or so. He could be anywhere, and he feared the worst.

Distant sirens could be heard, and as he exited the car, he could feel the world change around him. Taking a flashlight from the glove box he aimed a beam into the dingy street beyond. As the darkness descended on the town of Foresbrook, the fog retreated into whatever primeval cracks it had ventured from and was replaced by fiery black clouds that shrouded the rooftops and made it very difficult to see further than a few meters in front, even with the strong beam of the flashlight.

Geoffrey plunged his free hand into a pocket and withdrew a scrap of red paper.

'_Welcome to our world Geoff. Don't worry about Gary, he's safe with me, but I think that silly villager told you too much about what's happening around here. Don't worry though, I still need you, so don't die! Roger xxx'_

Geoffrey was very confused, and convinced that he was going insane. And yet, the world did not seem like a delusion. It was crystal clear, albeit the darkness; and his head was refreshingly clear. He began to understand how people with psychotic delusions could convince themselves that what they were seeing was real.

Looking at the paper, he was most concerned about the last line; _'I still need you, so don't die!'_ What was going to kill him? Did this 'Roger' know something that he didn't?

He jogged down towards the main street, aiming the torch through every fetid archway and filthy window. There were no signs of life. It was like he'd awoken into some kind of twilight zone or nuclear wasteland. Everything was scorched and blackened, like Foresbrook had been witness to the deepest depths of hell and resurfaced only as a shell of what it had once been. The air raid sirens continued to balefully moan in the distance, and the strange scratching noise that he'd initially heard upon wakefulness niggled at the edge of his hearing irritably.

At the end of the street he turned to face the town hall; a large temple-like building with a large clock set in stone above the door. Feeling agoraphobic from the bizarre open and yet hideously dark atmosphere, he climbed the blackened steps and took refuge under the eaves of the building. Crouched behind a column he tried to regulate his breathing and slow his pounding heart. He'd never experienced anything close to this, except the occasional bad LSD trip back in his youth, and it was beginning to get to him. He slapped himself hard around the face, relishing the stinging blow.

'I've been a homicide detective for most of my working career, seeing dead bodies nearly every day, so surely I should be able to pull myself together and find a way out of this hell!' he scolded himself out loud. He stood up firmly and marched back down the steps and into the street, intending to drive back to Ashfield and officially report the disappearance of Gary and also the school bus, possibly twisting the truth. They'd never believe the story that he had to tell.

The torch beam bobbed up and down as Gary ran down the street and back towards his car. As it began to manifest itself out from the oily gloom, a hideous buzzing noise started up around him.

Crouched over the bonnet of his car was a lank, dirty, naked figure. Life!

'Hey! What's going on?' Geoff shouted at the figure. In response, the figure briefly twitched and groaned in grim, demonic ecstasy.

Geoffrey's eyes opened wide as the figure curled around to face him, its innards grotesquely coiling and tensing under its papery, translucent skin. Geoffrey jumped back as it crawled on four obscene long and gangly limbs towards him, jittering and chattering as it did so. He saw through his fear that two of the four limbs ended in two curled claws or talons that were silvery grey in colour and clinked harshly on the tarmac as it skittered towards him. Paralysed by fear, the only thing that he could do was stand and watch as the creature crawled to within a meter from him. It hissed and leapt onto two limbs, its clawed forearms held out in front of it menacingly. Its tubular head twitched side to side and it's wide set of maroon lips snapped open and shut in a sinister, disturbing way.

Geoffrey seemed to regain some feeling in his legs, so he began to take some steps backwards. The monster snapped at him, and the horrible disjointed lips seemed to scrunch into what looked like a smile. It began to follow him, brandishing the cruel looking talons with evil intent.

With a sudden twist of his body, Geoffrey span round and began to run away from the monster like his life depended on it, which it probably did. He headed back up towards the town hall hoping that it would give him refuge from the assailant that was practically nipping at his heel. Throwing open the door (which was suspiciously ajar) he entered the large, once well furnished lobby. He slammed the door shut behind him with a solid thud. He grabbed the nearest object, a burnt out chair, and shoved it forcefully under the door handle just in time to see it rattle in its frame in danger of being ripped off its hinges. He looked around the repugnantly burnt out room, noting how the floor had been replaced with rusted metal bars covered with an equally rusted iron mesh. He needed a weapon! Running over to a burnt table he grabbed one of the steel legs and tried to twist it off, but to no avail. Using like a lever, he rocked it back and forth in an attempt to snap it off, but still, it was too strong. Grunting with frustration he kicked the table and sent it skidding across the floor, just as a second monster appeared down the hall, identical to the one before, and twitching just as spasmodically. It raised its talons and made its advance, hopping over the various obstacles in its way with some agility. Geoffrey searched for an exit, and seeing a small green door he dived towards it, entering into some kind of small conference room. A large television mounted on a wall bracket spewed out white noise, and the long table was covered in what looked like dismembered doll parts. He picked one up and stared at it for a moment. In the middle of the table was what looked like a mannequin, and it was sat atop the endless piles of plastic arms, legs and heads like some kind of creepy monarch. He leaped up onto the table and sweeping the toy parts aside noticed that the mannequin was holding in one hand a small box of bullets, and in the other, a silver barrelled gun. Gary's gun! He ripped it out of the dolls grasp and loaded it. Was it functional? He would soon find out!

The two monsters appeared at the door he'd entered through, and since he'd made no attempt to block it, entered the room with little problem. Raising the gun he took aim and fired a slug deep into the brain of the first monster. It penetrated deep into the left side of its head, but with little effect. The monster twitched irritably but continued to advance. A clawed hand shot over the table, ripping the mannequin clean into two pieces, narrowly missing Geoffrey's legs. He jumped off the other side of the table, took aim, and fired a quick succession of bullets into the monsters lips. The left side of its face sprayed outwards in what looked like a mixture of blood and faeces, splattering the wall and letting an awful stench into the room. The creature began to take notice of its injuries, collapsing onto the table and squealing feebly, just as the second jumped up into the pile of dolls next to it. Geoffrey took careful aim and fired one shot into where its heart should have been, but to no avail. The monster leapt at him, and he narrowly avoided a claw to the face with a carefully timed dive to the side. The monster hissed, its lips quivering violently. It dived forwards again and Geoffrey, now lying flat on the floor rolled under the table, once again narrowly missing death. He pointed the gun at its face as it ducked down to find him and fired a bullet straight into the back of its head as it opened its mouth. It screamed but still refused to die. Rolling further under the table he managed to stay just out of reach as it swiped around him like a cat trying to grab a mouse. It hissed irritably and began to venture closer towards him. He fired another couple of shots into it, and eventually, it stopped moving.

Climbing out from under the table he checked his ammo clip. One bullet left, including the box of bullets. He was about to leave the room but something was wrong. Something was missing… The first monster! He spun round just in time to see it flying through the air towards him. He squeezed the trigger, instantly killing it with a perfect headshot. It didn't however, lose any of its momentum and therefore slammed into him with great speed. Geoffrey flew across the room, landing several feet away with the hulking, putrid mess lying directly on top of him. Somehow without throwing up, he managed to heave himself up and hobble out of the room.

He walked deeper into the dark, waterlogged town hall, reloading the gun as he did so. There were many deeply disturbing things going on around him as he walked through. At one point the iron mesh in the walls gave way to a series of metal cages, each of which containing something wrapped in a white sheet. These figures twitched every now and again and he could see the rise and fall of their tiny chests as they tried to breath. Each one was of course, utterly drenched in blood. Further into the building was a series of bloodied corpses hanging from the ceiling by their own innards, tiny droplets of blood dripping down onto his head from above.

What disturbed him the most however was large painting on the wall. It depicted the clear likeness of Frederick Baldwin, one of his father's killers. He was cradling the headless corpse of his murdered dog, but instead of looking upset, he looked very, very angry. Behind him stood a cloaked figure with stunningly piercing green eyes, and it seemed to be whispering in Frederick's ear. A plaque on the bottom of the painting stated in clear, block capitals: 'THE RUMOUR'

Geoffrey some how managed to tear his eyes away from the painting and continue his journey down the impossibly long corridor. There was no way that he was still somehow in the town hall. He must've walked at least two miles by now, and no building in such a tiny town was that long. He seemed to be on a downwards slope which was subtle, but considering the length of the corridor, must have sent him far, far underground. He considered turning back, but for what purpose, to wear himself out but still be in the centre of hell on earth? No, he had to keep going.

- - - - -

Katie ran and ran until she was sure that the Pyramid Head was no longer following her. She turned around and pointed the torch into the darkness behind her. Nothing. Was she safe? She calmed down and began to inspect her surroundings, wondering where the hell she was. She was further underground than she'd first thought. She'd woken up in a subway, and had gone down several flights of stairs since then. How far down was she?

The trickling of water was the only sound she could hear. The air raid sirens had disappeared from her field of hearing, and they'd been faint to begin with anyway. She was in some kind of underpass. Graffiti covered what little concrete had not melted away into wire mesh, and she could see white lines on the ground in front of her. Was she now stood in a road? And underground road? The concept seemed strange, but not unlikely considering what had already happened. Other than the white lines, she had no idea what kind of surroundings she was in, as the torch beam only penetrated a few meters.

She huddled into the warm folds of Philips coat and pressed on into the darkness, not knowing how long the tunnel was, how long it would take to traverse, or what was on the other side.

After a considerable amount of walking, she was ready to give up until she saw a large, black shape in the middle of the road. A car! She raced over to it and pressed her face to the window in an attempt to see inside. There, nestled on the back seat was one of the large, pale creatures that the Pyramid Head had butchered. She recoiled in fear and began to back away from the vehicle, being as quite and discreet as she could. The creature noticed her regardless, and scrabbled out of the car through some hidden exit. It chattered its lips and stalked towards her, flexing its wrist blades menacingly.

She collapsed onto the floor and hung her head in her hands. She was sick of running now. She was clearly insane, so she decided to let the monster be the supreme judge of her fate. I crawled up to her, tasting the air and relishing her suicidal decision. She squeezed her eyes shut, but there was no final blow. Three clear gunshots rang out and the creature fell on its side, vomiting faeces from its gnarly lips all over her legs causing her to leap back in disgust.

Geoffrey had finally emerged from the lengthy corridor and had entered a large tunnel to see a helpless girl at the mercy of one of the horrible monster he'd battled back in the town hall. He'd fired 3 shots into it, but knowing that they could take more bullets than that, he ran over to get a more direct shot.

'Get the hell out of the way!' he yelled at the girl, pointing his gun at the creatures head and firing another couple of shots into it. The monster shuddered one last time, and then stopped moving.

'What's going on?' the girl sobbed, her pretty face streaked with tears of fear. He kneeled down beside her and put his arm around her.

'I don't know, but we have to get out of here. C'mon.' He helped her to her feet.

_Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump_

She jumped from his hold, the expression of pure terror plastered across her face.

'We have to leave! He's coming, he's coming, oh god….' she spluttered, tripping over her own feet and falling over onto the wire mesh once again.

Geoffrey's face screwed up. 'Who's coming?' he asked.

She tried to answer, but she couldn't speak, she was too anxious to even say one word. She got to her feet and began to run. Geoffrey started after her, calling for her to stop. The thumping was getting closer, and he really didn't want to see what was making the noise, so he gave chase, plunging further and further into the darkness…

- - - - -

Philip had found his way to the 3rd floor, and was scouring all the corridors for room 201. However, there were some turnings on the map that weren't actually there. He wondered whether or not this was due to the 'change' that the hospital had undergone. He turned a corner that wasn't on the map and was faced by another demonic nurse. Without thinking he ran at her and stabbed his blade deep into where her eye socket should have been. It sunk in all the way to the handle, so far in fact that when he came to pull it out he found that he couldn't. Kicking her to the ground he stamped hard on her chest, resulting in a few pronounced cracks and more give than was healthy. Using this as a point of leverage, he yanked the blade from her face and stamped down hard on her rotten, slippery throat. This harsh action caused the head to separate from the shoulders with a splat. Philip smiled a smile of grim satisfaction, followed by a sense of self loathing. How could he take pleasure in such a disgusting act? He weighed the knife in his hand, hating and resenting the instrument of destruction, but feeling safe and secure in its presence at the same time.

He continued down the corridor, getting more and more depressed and heavy-footed as he did so. He'd never find his mothers room… Then something caught his eye; a room that seemed to give off an ethereal white glow. Whilst the rest of the hospital was rotted, rusted and full of death, this one door and the wall and floor surrounding it was clean of all affliction. It looked like a normal hospital, just in that small area. The number on the door was 35. How was number 35 on the 3rd floor? Surely it would be on the ground floor.

He pulled Rogers note from his pocket and took another look: '_Anyway, stay away from rooms 35 and 163. Jimmy and George are a proper pair of assholes!'_

What was in room 35 that Roger didn't want him to see? Philip was very curious, and also feeling defiant against the rules that his brother had given him. He was a fully grown man, he could do hat he wanted! He walked up to the door, turned the handle, opened the door just a crack…

…_he swilled another mouthful of scotch, downing his sorrows once again. George Rosten sat in a comfortable leather chair behind a plush wooden desk in a cosy little study, lost in his own thoughts. Valtiel visited him in his dreams last night, giving him the 'divine message' he so desperately sought. There was no way the rest of The Order would believe him though. Jimmy Stone was the real master, the real leader of the Valtiel sect, and nobody would believe that it was he, not Jimmy who was the chosen one. _

_Getting up he made his way outside and into the vast hallway of the large manor house. Waiting for him was Sharon Blake DARKNESS , the young woman who had moved into Silent Hill only a few weeks before. She refused to join The Order, but Jimmy insisted that the prophecy proclaimed her importance in the Descent of the Holy Mother. How? Well, Jimmy was not known for his clarity, and a lot of things that he said and did didn't make much sense. He was seldom mistaken though, so many Order members gave him the benefit of the doubt with Sharon Blake DARKNESS ._

'_Are you ready to join us Blake?' Rosten asked, running a hand through his sleek black hair._

'_Never!' she spat. 'All I want to do is live here in peace with my family. Is that too much to ask?'_

_Rosten shrugged. 'Valtiel calls for you Blake. The Seal of Metatron burns with white hot fire when you are near. You cannot run from your destiny.'_

_Sharon Blake DARKNESS shook her head in disbelief. 'You people are mad… You, Jimmy Stone… All of you!' With that she turned and fled from the manor, down the moonlit path and into the night._

_Rosten stood and watched her, a blank look on his face. The silhouette of Jimmy Stone manifested itself behind him. 'She'll be back George, whether she likes it or not!'_


	8. The First Regression: George Rosten

_From that moment on, Rosten knew what he had to do. He had to somehow use the signs that Valtiel was giving him to bring forth the Holy Mother without the rest of The Order discovering his plan. He needed an accomplice to help him, but did not know who he could trust. His closest ally had been Claudia Wolf, but when she failed to manipulate Alessa Gillespie to be the mother of God, she was killed. Rosten did not believe that the only way to bring forth the Holy Mother was by incubating the foetus in one such girl. There were tales and depictions of the '21 holy sacraments' that could be used to bring forth the mother, but no Order member knew how to implement them. Valtiel was telling him who was important though. Was he the one to implement the sacrifice? The tattoo on his arm depicting the seal of Metatron burned when Sharon Blake was with him. It was telling him that she was important, and screaming the word 'Darkness' at him._

_He made his way to the Wish House, Silent Hills orphanage. There was a sacrifice being held for the children there, and he was to oversee the event._

_In the drab, dusty yard stood a tall man in black robes and a flat red hood. In his hands he held a short spear, and was pointing it at the sacrifice, a newborn baby born out of wedlock. The baby wailed in its crib, and was the only sound that rang out through the dry, acrid atmosphere. A circle of solemn looking children stood around the iron plinth on which the crib sat, the intense look of fear, curiosity and anticipation gleaming in their wide eyes._

_Rosten entered the circle and donned his own hood. He glared at the executioner through his stunning blue eyes, bowing his head slightly. The executioner returned the bow and Rosten turned towards his infantile audience._

'_Today you will witness the cleansing of an infantile spirit. This poor creature, born out of wedlock is a sin, and must be released from his inevitable torment. The Holy Mother says in the Crimson Tome: "…and should a new spirit be released into the earth through the false vagina, impurity and darkness shall consume the child, forever preventing it from ascending to the paradise that waits beyond the gate of life. Therefore, let it be that the child shall be cleansed by the mighty hand of Xuchilbara, for one moment of pain shall save the spirit from a lifetime of agony". Today we follow the teachings of the Holy Mother by releasing this poor soul back into the ether, but do not despair! The boys parents shall be punished for their blasphemy and cast into eternal purgatory,' he recited to the children._

'_Why can't the Holy Mother comes and see us Mr. Rosten? Why can't she instruct us in creating paradise beyond the teachings of the Crimson Tome?' came the tiny voice of a young boy; brown haired and green eyed._

_Rosten glared at him. 'How dare you interrupt this ceremony? Wait in your room until we have completed it, I will deal with you then!' he snarled mercilessly._

_The young boy sullenly slumped off towards the Wish House, followed by twenty or thirty pairs of eyes._

'_Pay attention!' screamed Rosten. The children jumped back round in fright and he continued. 'The child shall be helped on his journey to the other world by the blessing of the spear.'_

_The executioner held the spear out towards Rosten who in turn, sprinkled some droplets of pinkish water onto the blade. He uttered some comforting words of witchcraft and nodded to the robed figure. _

'_Oh Holy Mother, we offer this baby to you, and beg that you welcome him to your breast, despite his clear sin.'_

_In one swift movement the executioner turned around, raised the spear, and plunged it through the babies soft, supple chest cavity, a thin pillar of blood squirting in an upwards arc. It uttered a throaty gasp, squealed, and died. _

_The children watched the grisly ritual with a morbid curiosity that they felt ashamed of. Rosten wordlessly exited the circle and made his way to the Wish House. Entering the small kitchen he grabbed a grubby glass and filled it with water. He was feeling lethargic after the ritual, and downing the cool liquid seemed to still his squirming innards._

_He entered the bedroom shard by all the orphans and there, sat on his bed was the young boy, Walter Sullivan._

'_Why did you interrupt me Walter? You know what the price is for speaking when you've not been spoken to.'_

_Walter shrugged. 'I don't know Mr. Rosten. I want to know how to bring my mother back. The Holy Mother.'_

_Rosten raised a suspicious eyebrow. 'What do you mean _your _mother?'_

_Walter avoided the question. 'How come she is not here Mr. Rosten? Why hasn't paradise descended yet?'_

_Rosten sighed. 'There is a long and complicated procedure my son. She will be here one day.'_

_Walter gazed up at him with his big green eyes. 'I went to see her in Ashfield at the weekend. She talked to me.'_

_Rosten leaped to his feet. 'You left the Wish House? You left Silent Hill? There will be a price to pay young child!' he shouted. 'You know the rules! Why do you continually disobey? The Holy Mother will not be pleased by this defiance!' Rosten spluttered in rage and disbelief. Never had a child of The Order stepped so far out of line._

'_Please sir! She said that you held the answers! She told me that we could set her free!'_

_Rosten was taken aback. How could this boy possibly know anything? _

'_She told me that… that I would be the conjuror…' _

_There was a great flash of light, and there sat Walter Sullivan, but as a fully grown man. Had he always been a fully grown man? Rosten was feeling shaken. He jumped to his feet and pointed a shaky finger at Walter. _

'_What is this heresy?' he trembled._

_Walter smiled. 'She said you'd show me the way.'_

'_I do see how I can help!' Rosten shouted, unused to such bizarre circumstances._

_Walter ran a hand through his shoulder length brown hair. 'I don't understand George! She said you'd know what I was to do?'_

_Rosten was very flustered, but then a thought hit him. Diving towards Walters's small bedside cabinet he ripped out the draw and emerged with a small, red, wrinkled book: a copy of the Crimson Tome._

'_Yes, yes. I discovered something Walter. A dark secret from aeons ago… It will be hard to find… I must go back to my study. Look, I don't know what just happened, so I'll say this. I'm going to leave now, and at 8 o' clock tonight, you are going to come to my office. There is much to discuss. If you do not arrive, then I shall assume that the whole thing was some deranged dream of mine and dismiss it as a mental breakdown. Do you understand?'_

_Walter nodded vigorously. 'Yes. She said you'd show me the way, so I shall do anything to bring forth paradise.'_

_Rosten made for the door. 'Tonight then. Tonight…'_

- - - - -

Philip awoke with a horrific headache. He somehow managed to stand up, and through severely blurred eyes, he could see that he was in a small, white walled room. Was it the same room that was behind the door? He turned round and gazed into the corridor which was just as rotted and diseased as before. Yes, he was in the same place. The inside of the room was just like the normal world, with no decay in sight, although it was a bit grubby. He shut the door and made his way over to the bed. A pristine white sheet covered what looked like a human body.

He picked a chart from the bedside cabinet and read the name aloud.

'George Rosten.' The same guy from his vision? Most definitely. Tentatively, he drew back the sheet, and was amazed to find that there was no corpse, no demonic nurse or the deformed evil monster version of George that he was half expecting, but a careful arrangement of rolled up towels that were laid out in a human shape. Lying on the chest of this decoy was a scrap of paper, although this time not red. It was a small, crumpled sheet of brown parchment that flaked when he touched it. Being very gentle he managed to turn it over and view the side that was written on.

It was covered in near microscopic writing in a foreign tongue that he did not understand. The title of the piece however, was written in bold, curling English. It read, 'The Lost Chapter', but that did not mean anything to him. He frowned and scratched his head. He wanted to take it with him, but knew it would be reduced to dust if he tried to pick it up again. He pulled the map from his back pocket and stabbed a hole through the room with the end of his knife.

'I really could use a pen at times like these…' he sighed.

- - - - -

_Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump_

Geoffrey found it increasingly difficult to keep up with Katie in the dark, twisted labyrinth. The thumping seemed to echo all around him, sapping the spirit from his bones and making him slow down, like he was running through water.

'Hurry up!' Katie screamed at him.

Geoffrey grimaced. 'I can't…'

He turned his head behind and saw the silhouette of the great executioner marching rhythmically only a few meters behind him. The pointed iron helmet gave it the appearance of an animated tower of church; a grotesque edifice of unseen evil energy that had been raised specifically to end them to their deaths. His eyes widened in fear, and the adrenalin produced gave him the energy to increase his speed, thus losing the Pyramid Head in the darkness from whence it came.

'How the hell do we get out of here?' Katie rasped, finding it difficult to speak as she ran.

'I don't know. How did you get in here?' Geoffrey asked. 'I came in through a tunnel that came out from the back of Foresbrook town hall.'

'I don't really know. I was chased by that horrible Pyramid Head thing, and I kind of just ran down here. From a subway,' she replied, once again with difficulty.

A sudden turn in the road led them into a street; a street with houses.

Geoffrey was confused. They stopped running and stood for a second in the comforting glow of a streetlamp.

'I thought we were underground? I ran down a long tunnel that sloped downwards. Why are we outside?' he mused.

'I don't know. Come on, we have to hide!' Katie protested, grabbing his arm and dragging him into the town.

By nothing but torchlight and the occasional island of orange streetlamp light they navigated the town; ducking through alleys, cutting through gardens, clambering over walls and rolling through hedges.

Chuckling to himself, Geoffrey grabbed Katie's shoulder just before she attempted to jump another wall. 'I think we've lost him', he smiled.

Katie returned the smile, but hers was weak and empty. 'What's happening here? Who are you?' she questioned, her eyes full of pain and fear. She clearly wasn't taking it as well as Geoffrey which was to be expected. He was a 30 something year old man with a gun in his right hand and years of experience in handling smashed up corpses. She was just a young woman with probably no experience in the real world at all.

'My name is Geoffrey Simmons, but you can call me Geoff. I don't know what's going on around here either. I came to Foresbrook with a friend of mine. We were on police business, looking for school bus that crashed in that area…'

'That was my bus!' she interrupted forcefully. 'Me and a friend managed to get out, and we went to Brookhaven Hospital with this guy called Philip to get some help for everybody else, but then it all went weird and I woke up in a subway tunnel…' she said, wiping her eyes and sniffling as she did so.

Poor girl. She'd clearly had a rougher time than he had. They seemed to be safe for the moment though.

'Well, we're in this together so you can trust me, OK?' Geoffrey soothed.

She nodded and got to her feet. 'We need to find somewhere to stay. I'm really tired.'

Geoffrey nodded, suppressing a yawn which seemed to be triggered when she mentioned sleep. Where was safe in this nightmare? He daren't sleep for fear of waking up in the process of being eaten.

'We'll find a place, and you can sleep whilst I keep watch,' he decided.

'OK. Aren't you tired?' she asked.

He scratched his head. 'Yeah, but you need sleep more than I do. I've only been awake for an hour or so, so I shouldn't really be tired at all. It must just be this, this nightmare place getting to me…'

'We should find somewhere. C'mon,' Katie hastened, dragging Geoffrey to his feet. She suddenly felt an awful biting pain thrust itself into her side. She shrieked in pain and collapsed onto the hard ground.

Geoffrey was concerned. 'What is it? Hat's wrong?'

She scrunched up her face in agony as Geoffrey helped her into a sitting position. 'On the bus… when it crashed… I hurt myself.'

'Is it bad?' Geoffrey asked. He was no doctor, but figured he should see how she felt before attempting to move her.

'I don't know,' she groaned. 'I think I've prob… probably, got a few cracked ribs or something… I'll be fine, just give me a minute…'

The effort of trying to help Geoffrey to his feet had put too much strain on the already damaged ribs, causing one of them to crack in a painful and awkward position.

Geoffrey let her support himself on him, and he gingerly held her up, not wanting to do more damage than what had already been done. Slowly they began to hobble back out into the street, the only sound cutting through the still air being Katie's frantic breathing.

'Let's get in here,' Geoffrey said, letting her go for a moment and trying a nearby door. 'Fuck! Is every door in this place locked?'

'Kick… it down!' Katie struggled to say, leaning against a streetlamp for support.

He stood back and kicked the lock with the bottom of his foot, hard. There was a splinter of wood and the door rattled in its frame. He stepped back and kicked again, blasting its rotten frame out of the doorjamb and into the darkness beyond.

'C'mon,' he said, taking her by the shoulders and leading her to the entrance.

They entered into a small dark foyer that smelled of what could only be described as death. They felt horribly vulnerable with no door, and thus decided to penetrate deeper into the building.

Down through the peeling, musty corridors they wordlessly stumbled. It was in this period of silence that the true effect of their situation seemed to hit home to Geoffrey. He struggled to keep himself from bursting into tears; as although he continued to pinch himself, he wasn't waking up. Katie was less affected for the most part, as concentrating on the pain in her side kept her mind clear of most other things. One thing did keep coming back to haunt her though; the Pyramid Head. What was it and what did it want? She sensed that there was some difference between it and the other monsters she'd seen skulking around. Was it in superiority, or did they both have different agendas?

'This room will do,' said Geoffrey, helping her through a sturdy oaken door and into a small, bare box room.

She sat down against the hard wall and sighed. It wasn't going to be a comfortable night.

- - - - -

Philip resumed his search of the hospital. He was more frantic than ever to find Rachel and his mother. He felt angry with himself for entering the room of George Rosten, and had a terrible feeling that his defiance of Rogers letter would somehow come back to bite him on the ass. Almost as expected though, the next room he came across, despite being a complete contradiction to the map, was room 163; the room of Jimmy Stone. Like Rostens, this seemed separate from the red and putrid chaos that infected the rest of the building, and he felt eager to experience the normality that would encase its four walls. He entered the room, but there was no flash of light, only a low, inhuman groan. The air seemed to vibrate around him and hideously painful migraine wormed its way into his brain. Crouched on the other side of the bed was a hunched, blackened figure that's mere presence seemed to warp the very air around it. It moaned again, and stood up to face Philip.

'He found it… the Lost Chapter…' came a strange ethereal voice that seemed to be implanted directly into his head, like the migraine was some kind of crude side effect of a telepathy that the figure had not yet entirely mastered.

Its empty grey eyes seemed to stare directly into his soul. They were somehow dead and emotionless, and yet full of passion and life. Philip was rooted to the spot by a combination of fear, and unearthly power. He had not, fortunately, lost the ability to speak.

'Are you Jimmy Stone?' he asked the translucent spectre.

Its hooded head bobbed slightly in agreement. 'I am what is left.'

Philip narrowed his eyes. 'What exactly are you? Are you a ghost? Can you… can you help me?'

The hooded figure took a step towards him. He'd noticed how it didn't seem to have any arms, and he wondered why that was so. 'I am what is left,' came the monotonous response.

Philip was getting concerned. The distance between him and Jimmy Stone was getting less and less, and yet he was still unable to move. Sweat broke from his brow. 'Please, what are you?'

'I am what is left.'

Philip became suddenly enraged. 'What the fuck are you?' he shouted.

The force of his outburst seemed to halt the ghost, but still, the answer was the same. 'I am what is left.'

Philip noticed as he neared that Jimmy Stone did indeed have arms, but they were somehow closely wrapped around his body. 'A straitjacket…' he murmured. 'Is there a mental institution or an asylum round her?'

The figure turned towards the bed, looked at it intently, and then…

…Philip seemed to awaken, and the ghost had gone. He could also move again and he generally felt chirpier and more alert, like the entire experience had been a dream. He knew that it hadn't been, and was wondering how he could have awoken from consciousness? He walked over to the bed and looked for whatever Stone had been looking for. The bed was freshly made and not creased in the slightest. Nobody had slept in it recently. There was a chart on the end of the bed, and that was the only pint of interest. He picked it up and read the neatly scrawled notes.

_Name: James Stone_

_Injury: Fell down the stairs. He claimed that he was 'battling a demon' and that is what caused the fall. He said that he was not afraid of the demon because he had been waiting for it, but it was being 'controlled by the wrong person'. After this point he remained silent and cathartic for some many hours, despite constant questioning. Admitted to Silent Hill Asylum to be treated for schizophrenia. _

Philip mused over the notes. So Jimmy was in an Asylum somewhere close. He felt that he urgently needed to speak with this man, but refused to leave the hospital without first finding his girlfriend and his mother. He did not quite know how, but time was running short.

Spurred on by newly released adrenalin, he ran aimlessly down the corridors in search of room 201. He knew he was on the right floor… He just knew it. The map said otherwise, but he'd learnt not to trust the map as it had lied to him on multiple occasions.

He turned another corner and was met by a small group of demonic nurses. The hissed at him and advanced creakily. He turned the other way, running back down the corridor he'd come from, but was blocked by yet more nurses. There was no way out of that section of corridor except the few rooms along either wall. He tried one of them; locked. He tried another; locked. A nurse slightly ahead of the rest clawed at him, and his response was to separate the head from her shoulders with a well aimed, adrenalin fuelled kick. He tried another room; jammed shut. Two nurses clutched at his clothes, and he felt hard, steely fingers dig deep into his arm. He felt the muscle rip under the skin and yelled in pain. He swung his knife round in reflex, hitting the nurse in the arm with such a force that it completely severed the hand. Kicking the other nurse away he stumbled and fell to his knees. He reached for the last door, knowing that he'd never have the chance to try another. He pulled the handle; it opened! Despite his throbbing arm he scrabbled to his feet, narrowly avoiding the swing of a lead pipe, and threw himself into the room, slamming the door behind him. Searching frantically he grabbed a battered chair, jamming it under the handle forcefully.

'Ph-ph-ilip?' croaked a weak and wispy voice. He turned around slowly, and there she was; Dahlia Snow. Philips mother. She was much frailer looking than he remembered, and was covered in plastic tubes, wires and small circular pads.

'Mom?' was the only word he could muster.

'Philip… Why- why is Ro-oger… Why is he… doing this? How?' she groaned, sparkling tears sliding down her cheek, changing course as the filled her wrinkles.

He ignored her. 'Where's Rachel Mom? Where has he taken her?'

Dahlia shook her head. 'Why son? Why?'

'Where has he taken her!' he yelled, thumping the edge of the bed in frustration.

'I do not know… he… your father… The Order… Wal… Walter… Sulli…'

He looked at her chart instinctively. On it was stuck a small shred of red paper. Unlike the previous notes, this was covered in a ghastly scrawl…

'_Why did you not listen to me brother? Don't you respect me? I looked after that fucking alcoholic bastard for so long Philip! Our father; YOUR father! You owe me your respect dammit! Don't worry, you're going to pay! You're little girlfriend? I'm gonna fuck her up so bad! But I'll be reasonable and give you a chance to save her pretty white throat… The roof. Now!_

_Roger xxx'_


	9. Conjuror of the Iron Behemoth

Up and up Philip went. After leaving his mother with a swift kiss, he bolted from the room and began to make his way up to the roof. He had no idea how he was going to get there, but it made sense to follow the stairs up, and so that is what he did. He was not troubled on his journey, as he was running too fast for any of the nurses to attack him, but his pace slowed after he'd ascended another 3 floors. His legs ached with fatigue, but he _had _to keep moving if he wanted to save Rachel from whatever fate his twisted elder brother was planning. Turning yet another corner he slipped in a wide, sticky puddle, and fell flat on his face. He groaned as the previous headaches that had eventually faded came flooding back, and groaned once again when he saw the creature clinging to the ceiling right above him.

'Come on little brother! You were always a klutz!' it hissed in a barely audible whisper. Then it was gone. Gone through a hole in the ceiling that bit its way upwards through the tiles, the insulation and the tarmac. He could see grey sky through the gash, and felt cold wind stinging his cheeks.

'_This must be the top floor, and this hole must be the only way up there' _he thought. He jumped up and reached for it, but it was too high. He quickly searched for a ladder, or a table to stand on.

'_PHILIP!_' shrieked Rachel from somewhere above him. Frantic, he barged into the nearest room; stomped the peeling face of a floored nurse that was clawing at his ankles, and grabbed the metal hospital bed. He dragged it out of the door, tore the mattress off and stood it on its headboard. Balancing carefully, he used it as a makeshift ladder, and managed to gain the extra couple of feet he needed. Clutching at the hole he felt the bed slide in the blood underneath him. With a _clang _it collapsed, and he was left hanging from the ceiling by a single piece of rough, yellow insulation. Gathering all his strength he somehow managed to claw his way through the hole and out onto the rooftop. Raw from the fibreglass insulation and numb from supporting his entire bodyweight, his aching fingers grasped the rusted bloody knife he'd come to see as his closest ally. He stood and looked around.

The first thing he noticed was the world itself. It was dull, grey and foggy; not dark, frightening and rotted. Was it only the inside that was corrupted? He shoved his head into the hole, and was delighted (if slightly confused) to find that although there was still a huge pool of blood and the metal skeleton of a hospital bed on the ground, it was now light green lino; and not rusted, bloody wire mesh. The hospital was normal again. He wondered if there would still be disembodied nurses patrolling the corridors.

Suddenly he remembered Roger and Rachel. He leapt upright, gripped his knife and looked around the roof for them. It was easier said than done, because the roof that he'd expected to be relatively flat consisted of various different levels, platforms, scaffolding and small decrepit huts, all of which combined to form a large, shanty town-like maze. Being as quite as he could, and running as fast as he dared, he darted across the rooftop. He assumed that Rachel would be held on a relatively flat area, and most likely he would have to kill his brother. Could he even be killed now? If so, would the world return to normal?

He quietly opened the door of a small wooden hut, (which looked very out of place) and peeked through a small grubby window. There she was! Rachel was suspended from what looked like a large weathervane, or a crude, badly constructed metal crucifix. The frame was held upright on a higher platform. A higher platform which he couldn't see the entirety of. Where was Roger hiding?

Leaving the hut he climbed onto a squashed trashcan and hoisted himself up onto the next section of roof.

'Philip? Oh my God, Philip! You have to save me!' sobbed Rachel when she caught sight of him. He immediately ran up to the metal device and tried to unhook her, but for some reason he could not figure out how she was attached to it.

'Philip!' came the deep and powerful voice of his elder brother, Roger Snow. Philip turned to face the tall, handsome, long haired figure standing tall and imposing on the highest section of the roof.

'Roger? What's been happening? What's going on?' Philip asked, squinting to make out Rogers facial features. He was strangely silhouetted against the cold, grey sky.

'You saw George', was the reply.

'Roger! Tell me! What, the fuck, is going on?' Philip replied angrily. He ran up, vaulted a table of hospital equipment which he suspected was left in his way purposefully. Roger turned and disappeared around a corner. Philip began to pursue, but was called back by his girlfriend. He ran back to free her, but there was Roger; stood calmly and placidly at the foot of the crucifix.

'Did you learn anything… interesting?'

Roger seemed entirely focused on the strange experiences that Philip had felt in Room 35. What was so important about the strange flashback?

'Errm… something about a George Rosten, and this weird guy called… Sullivan… What's this all about Roger?'

Rogers face remained cold and impartial.

'Do you know why you were brought here Philip?' he asked coolly.

Philip shrugged. 'I don't know. I thought I came here to visit you and Dad, but apparently there is something else going on,' he replied haughtily. He was losing his patience, but the horrible and lifeless power residing behind his brother's eyes was disconcerting.

'You shouldn't have gone in there Philip. This town holds a terrible and disturbing past… It would have been best for you to not to get involved. Just do your job and leave. You shouldn't have brought her…' He looked at Rachel with a strange, unplaced loathing that Philip did not understand.

'What is my job Roger? Why am I here? Besides!' he suddenly remembered. 'You wrote in the letter for me to _specifically_ bring Rachel.'

Rogers face contorted suddenly, and the steel frame supporting Rachel squirmed into life. Writhing and contorting, it greatly pained the poor girl. He screams could still be heard even after it had consumed her, dragged her into its depths and devoured her. Was she still alive? Philip didn't even think Roger new. Leaping up onto the mangled heap, he screamed her name as he tried to dig her out. But it was like trying to dig her out of a cage covered in a hundred thick layers of steel.

Roger chuckled behind him. 'That's what I wanted her for. A bit of entertainment.'

Philip leapt round, vexed and upset. The only thing that stopping him from being completely distraught was the strangely optimistic feeling that she was not dead; just trapped within the belly of the mechanical beast.

'What do you want from me?' Philip growled, speeding over towards his brother and aggressively grabbing him by the lapels of his shirt.

In an instant, Rogers face completely transformed, and he became the scaly wolf-like creature Philip had originally seen on the hospital ceiling. No distinguishable features could be made out due to the intense speed at which it moved. Philip felt himself hurled to the ground with considerable force, and the thing that was Roger darted back onto the higher rooftop before instantly becoming Roger again. It had all happened too fast for Philips brain to handle. All he saw was his brother standing there; solitary; unmoving; motionless and emotionless.

'What do I want from you Philip? Preferably not getting assaulted!' He brushed down his shirt and jacket smartly, looking down his nose at Philip with the harsh contempt of brotherly rivalry.

He paused for a while.

'You have a power Philip. You have a power which is the secret to all of this; the _key_' he began; raising his arms in reference to the grey, creature polluted world that Philip had come to despise.

'I don't have any powers, Roger,' was his dismissive reply. 'At least tell me what you mean by "powers".'

Roger shrugged. 'I do not know brother. They don't trust me that that information, although I do not quite know why.'

'Who is "they",' Philip asked; intrigued at the development. Perhaps this "they" would hold some of the answers he sought, if Roger was incapable, or just unwilling to tell him.

'That's not important, Philip. The only important thing is to take you to them. They have plans for you, and you _will _help them. If you know what is best for them.'

Philip knew his brother, and if there was even the tiniest shred of the boy he'd once looked up to, he knew how to throw him off course.

'So what you're saying,' he began. 'Is that, you have been ordered to take me to "them", even though you're not trusted enough to know why they want me? I'm your brother for Christ's sake! They could want to kill me!'

Roger considered.

'I get the feeling that you are being used, Roger. Look; I know you had a hard time of it looking after Dad all those years. I would've helped, but I was young at the time, and Mom told me all about –'

'Are you blaming Mom for this?' Roger interrupted. He'd successfully been sidetracked, but Philip knew that he had to play it carefully if he wasn't to turn Roger against their mother.

'Well, kind of… you have to remember though; she had no obligation to look after him. They are divorced after all.'

Roger's eyes narrowed. 'But what about _me_, Philip? Why couldn't she help him for me? Why don't we bring her up here and ask her…'

Philip tensed suddenly.

The strange metal leviathan originally holding Rachel twisted and writhed with unseen forces. It must have run deep into the hospital, because as it ripped itself free the very foundations shook, and a long, metallic body slithered its form out onto the roof. Initially snake-like, it quickly coiled in on itself; becoming a large silver ball. The ball opened up and out fell Rachel; shaken, but very much alive.

'Philip!' she wept, quickly running over and throwing herself into his arms. 'What's happening Philip? What's going on?'

'Shhh, calm down. I'll explain all I know when… well, if we get out of this,' he whispered gently. He could feel Rogers's eyes on him.

The ball opened up further, and the twisted metal began to form a large chair or a throne. Dahlia Snow lay sprawled out on the chair; asleep or passed out? Clearly Roger still held his mother in high regard, as despite its crudeness, the chair supported her surprisingly gently.

'Mother,' Roger whispered. Like a magical word, she immediately opened her eyes and sat up.

'Roger? What's going on Roger?'

She was dazed, confused and heavy lidded, like she had just awoken from deep sedation.

'Mom,' he said quietly. He glided over towards the chair, and the great steel ball fashioned some steps for him to ascend to her level. He reached her and took her by the hands. 'Why did you leave me with Dad? I was only a boy Mom, but you left me with him.'

Philip noticed that the presence of their mother made him calmer, more childlike, and most importantly, more human.

'You… you were very… you were very mature Roger. Your father, he didn't listen to me. You could control him. What have you done? What have you become?'

She suddenly noticed the steel behemoth that enveloped them both, and her eyes widened in fear.

'Oh my god! What is this thing Roger?'

She saw Philip stood some distance away, Rachel wrapped tightly in his arms.

'Philip! Help me!' she shrieked.

The seemed to upset Roger greatly. 'Mom? I won't hurt you, you know I won't,' he pleaded. However, Dahlia recoiled from his touch.

'Stay away from me! I do not know what this place has done to you, but you are not my son!'

Those last words stung Roger immensely, and with a low distressed moan he collapsed to his knees, sobbing uncontrollably.

Dahlia took the opportunity to leave the chair, and ran down the steps towards Philip, who was waiting for her.

The animate metal monstrosity constructed by Rogers strange and fantastic powers seemed to shake with his sorrow, and without being commanded wrapped itself around him soothingly. Soundlessly, it wrapped him in a tight steel cocoon and crawled back into the hole from which it had savagely ripped itself from.

'Mom! Rachel! You're both safe,' Philip cried happily, embracing them both tightly. 'I didn't think I'd see either of you again.'

They both returned the hug, weeping words of love, happiness and relief…

…Deep within the hospital bowels, Roger seethed with loneliness and resentment…

- - - - -

Roger's emotional defeat momentarily released Gary Lawson from whatever hold had bound him into his bed. Awakening from a state of catatonic sleep with a sudden jolt, he was amazed to find himself in a hospital bed. His vision was blurry, and he felt dizzy, but he was now awake… He closed his eyes for a minute or two to let his sight come back, and when it had, he looked around.

The bed had been made to hospital standards, and trapped him under its tightly wrapped sheets firmly, but snugly. Someone had taken the liberty of removing him from his clothes, and replacing them with a white, spotless hospital gown. He saw a needle in his arm, linked to a see-thru plastic bag on a long metal pole. His initial thought was that he'd been knocked out, and sent to the nearest hospital for treatment, but there was no lump on his head…

'Hello?' he called out groggily. 'Geoffrey? Are you there?'

There was an eerie silence throughout the building that he found unsettling. Surely there _must _be other people here.

Looking around, he decided to wait in his bed for a nurse to come and visit, but then he saw something so disgusting that he physically cried out, and nearly fell out of bed.

The bag attached to his arm was not full of blood, or other medical fluids, but contained fetid, stinking pond water, complete with algae, pondweed, and an assortment of flies, water beetles, and other small larvae. What was so horrible about it, was that this horrid mixture of filth and animal was connected directly to his arm; pumping it straight into his blood stream.

In concern for his health, he ripped the needle from his arm, leapt out of bed and ran out of the room, hoping to find a place where he could report the terrible standards of hygiene, and maybe someone who could contact Geoffrey for him.

He reached the lobby, and hammered on the bell at the reception. So far he'd seen nobody. Nobody at all. Sighing with annoyance and shivering from the cold draughts teasingly blowing up his gown, he jumped over the front desk and entered the small adjoining room. Within it was a multitude of useless papers, but it was warmer, so he decided to remain there for a while. He was very tempted to leave the hospital; after all, the exit was opposite the desk a mere 12 meters away. However, he felt unwilling to leave before getting some answers, or at least a set of warm clothes.

He decided to leaf through a few of the carefully sorted documents in a nearby cabinet, but found nothing of any real interest. One thing that he did notice was that every record was written in the same spidery scrawl, like one person had written them all. That would however, have been a literally impossible feat, as there were thousands upon thousands of detailed reports scattered all throughout the room.

Gary exited the room feeling more confused than when he'd entered. There was definitely something seriously wrong with the hospital… there was no doubt about that!

He wandered over to the double front doors and found them unlocked. He momentarily exited the building and found the outside just as grey, empty and cold as the inside of the hospital.

'Hey!' came a shout from behind him. He spun around and saw 3 figures running towards him; two women and one man. He recognised the man and one of the women, but didn't quite know where from…

'Oh my lord… people!' he shouted with glee.

The three did not crack even a small smile.

'Where did you come from?' the man asked.

'I don't know. I was in Foresbrook doing some… detective work, but then I kind of, passed out. I don't know why I passed out… Anyway, I woke up about 10 minutes in a hospital bed, so I got up and tried to find a nurse or somebody to tell me what had happened and how I got here,' Gary explained.

Philip laughed dryly. 'Trust me, you don't want to meet the nurses here…'

None of them understood.

Gary raised an eyebrow, but continued. 'Can I ask you a question?' He didn't wait for a reply. 'Do I know you? Have we met?'

The glitter of recognition spread across Philips face. 'No… Wait! You're the idiot that poured coffee on me in a diner earlier today, well yesterday!'

Rachel's face contorted with fear. 'Oh my god! It's the guy who chased us! You know, with his friend the crack head? What do you want with us?'

Gary held up his hands. 'Calm down love, I'm sure this is just one big misunderstanding…' but Philip had already grabbed him by the throat and pinned him up against the outside wall.

'What the fuck is going on? What do you know about what is going on? You're behind this aren't you?' he shouted accusingly.

'No, no, no!' Gary protested. He tried to push Philip away, but he was much too strong. 'I don't know what is going on. I woke up just now, honestly! Do you know where my 'crack head' friend is?' he asked.

Dahlia put her hand on Philips shoulder and gently pulled him away.

'Let him go honey. I'm sure we can trust him. Just be glad that we've found another human in this place,' she soothed.

Now _this _confused Gary. What the hell did she mean by that?

'Err, can you tell me what's going on?' he asked. 'Why isn't there any hospital staff?'

Philip eyeballed him suspiciously, but let him go, retreating back into the comfort of Rachel's embrace.

'We don't know. There's something very… very weird going on here. We don't know how to explain it.'

Gary narrowed his eyes to match Philips glare. 'Try me.'

'Well, there are no signs of human life other than you, my brother tried to kill me on the roof, and I've been attacked by faceless, zombie nurses. Satisfied?' he replied. The last part was news even to Dahlia and Rachel. Neither of them had encountered the nurses, and none had been encountered on their way down from the rooftop shanty town. Even the corpses of the ones Philip had killed had mysteriously disappeared.

Gary nodded slowly, only half mocking Philips story. 'Riiight… Can you at least tell me where we are? Or don't you know that either.'

Philip didn't like his tone, but answered regardless; mainly for the benefit of his girlfriend and mother who'd both woken up there after being kidnap by his deranged brother. 'Yeah, this place is Brookhaven. Down there is Foresbrook,' he said, pointing down the way he, Chris and Katie had come from. 'And down there is Silent Hill,' he said, pointing the opposite direction.

'Did you drive here?' Gary asked.

Philip nodded. 'Yeah, my car is round here. I guess you'll be wanting a ride out of this dump.'

'If you would be so kind,' nodded Gary.

'C'mon,' said Philip to Rachel and Dahlia. 'Let's get out of here and put this all behind us… Wait! Oh my god! Katie! She could still be alive,' he suddenly panicked, running back into the hospital.

The look on all of their faces was the expression of 'whom'?

He sensed this unspoken question and turned back to them.

'In Foresbrook I found a school bus in the woods full of injured kids, and two relatively uninjured ones came with me to this hospital. Shit! Those other kids will still be there in Foresbrook! We have to get help,' he blurted. None of them really followed what he was saying, except for Gary, whose face lit up at the mention of a school bus.

'What? Philip, what's going on?' Rachel asked. The poor girl was confused as it was, and he wasn't helping her with his crazy stories.

'Come and sit in the car with me. I'll explain it all,' he said.


	10. The Stranger and the Dog

Geoffrey awoke in the early hours of the morning, and was pleased to see that both he and the girl were still alive. They had not been attacked in the night, and the world seemed to have healed itself whilst they slumbered. The walls of the small empty room had been encrusted with the flaky, brown growths prevalent throughout the entirety of Foresbrook, the town hall, and the strange labyrinth he'd found himself in after traversing the tunnel, but now, it had all gone. A huge grin of relief grew on his face, and standing up, he stroked the now clean walls lovingly.

Katie awoke and was quite disturbed by the spectacle she was witnessing.

'Errm… Good morning Geoffrey,' she said to him. He stopped his antics, but remained ecstatic.

'Look! It's back to normal. It was all fucked up, but now it's OK…' he said, his voice drooping as the sentence progressed. 'Tell me I didn't imagine it all…' he said to her.

She shifted her weight and smiled wearily. 'Nah, it all happened. At least I think it did. I dunno. I suppose if we both saw the same thing, it must've happened right?'

Geoffrey nodded and smiled. 'Right.'

There was a period of silence, eventually broken by Katie.

'I wonder where we are. It was really, dark last night… We could even still be underground. Jeez, that was so scary…' The events of the previous night played through her mind like a video tape. That huge underground lair; that horrible monster that crawled out of the car; the man with the pyramid shaped helmet that wanted her. _It wanted her!_

'I don't know,' Geoffrey said curiously. Pulling the gun out of his pocket for reassurance, he made for the door.

'Don't leave me!' Katie yelled suddenly, clutching at her bruised ribs and giving him a helpless look.

He lowered the gun. 'Don't worry, I won't be long.'

He exited the room, making sure he shut it tightly behind him, and found himself in quite a long corridor. Each door had a number on it, the highest being '11'. He turned to his own door, finding no number, but a small plaque labelled 'Private'. Putting two and two together, he made the educated guess that they were in a small guesthouse.

In the foyer (an area which he vaguely remembered), the smell of death had gone, and was replaced by the gentle scent of roses. A fresh pitcher of water sat on the reception desk, and it was within this that the flowers were found. Geoffrey's eyes narrowed suspiciously. Where had they come from? He was certain that no plant could have remained so perfect and pristine throughout such corruption as the night before.

He explored the flowers, and found a card within:

_Hiya Geoff. I just wanted to let you know that I'm so glad you picked me and my family to look after such a very special dog. I'm sorry that your parents did not like you having a pet, but rest assured, Kip is safe with us._

_Peter Spaulding from next door_

Geoffrey was confused. Kip wasn't real… He turned away from the flowers, rolling the card in his hands thoughtfully. Clearly the madness of the night before had only been visually subsided. The crazy notes and letters hadn't stopped, but at least this time they weren't from that Roger character.

He paced the reception; brow furrowed, mind focused. He was unwilling to believe that what he had so far experienced was reality. Had he been drugged at some point? Perhaps he was hallucinating through some kind of mental illness. If so, it must have affected him quickly, because he remembered being perfectly fine a mere 12 hours ago.

There was a scratching noise coming from outside. He turned and saw the open doorframe from which he'd violently removed the door. He could see outside into a foggy open street. The scratching continued, and was soon accompanied by a gruff snuffling. Curious, Geoffrey stepped over to the door and peered outside. As he did so he heard the scampering of tiny paws, and whatever was making the noises vanished.

He was pleased to find himself outside, and not in some kind of gigantic underground cavern. The dense, solid, impenetrable blackness of the previous night had deceived him into thinking otherwise, so taking a deep breath, he relished the freedom.

He felt eyes upon him suddenly, although where from he didn't know. He span round in a 360 degree turn, his vision penetrating every last nook, crevice, alleyway and broken window… But there was nothing. However, as a reward for his curiosity, a short, sharp bark issued from around the corner. He immediately ran in that direction; past one of the many old fashioned streetlamps, and into the neighbouring street. It was empty.

Turning back to the building he and Katie had spent the night in, he finally noticed the large sign above the window. It said _Jack's Inn_; solving the mystery of where they had stayed.

He turned back to the street he had been led to, and there sat a small dog in the middle of the road; it's ears perked up.

'Hello doggy!' he said, walking over to it slowly. It wagged its tail as he neared, and woofed gently in greeting.

Geoffrey chuckled and walked closer, but before he could reach it, it turned and ran away to the next corner, turning back round and barking for him to follow.

'I can't!' he shouted after it. 'I have to help the girl!'

He turned around and made his way back to _Jack's Inn_. Katie was stood in the doorway; clearly pained by her damaged ribs.

'Who were you talking to?' she asked him suspiciously.

He put an arm around her and helped her into the street.

'This little dog. It was sat in the middle of the road for some reason. Wanted me to follow it,' he replied.

'Really? That's weird. Did you see any people?'

Geoffrey shook his head. 'Just the dog. I found out that we stayed at an inn though,' he laughed, pointing at the sign behind them.

Katie half smiled. 'Where are we Geoff?' she asked. 'I really don't recognise this place. The buildings are of a totally different architecture to the hospital I was at.'

'Hmmm… Let's look for a shop or something. I'm sure there must be a map or at least a sign telling us where we are somewhere around here.'

They continued to walk at quite a slow pace for some time, until a streetlamp with signs attached around its shaft could be seen at the end of a nearby street.

'Look!' exclaimed Katie, pointing at it frantically. 'That should point us in the right direction.'

'Yeah! It may even tell us which town we're in,' was the reply.

They made their way to the lamppost, and read all 4 of the signs. One read 'South Vale: Jack's Inn, Woodside Apartments and Brookhaven Hospital' and pointed back the direction that they had come from.

'Look! Brookhaven Hospital! That's where me, Chris and Philip went after he rescued us from the bus. Then the world got all fucked up and I woke up in a subway somewhere…' Katie said.

'Wait a sec,' Geoffrey interrupted. 'What bus is this?'

'My school bus. We were going to visit Toluca Lake on a geography trip, but the bastard crashed!' she passionately explained. 'We were trapped in it somehow. The door kind of melted shut, and all the windows were totally frozen solid, but Philip came and busted us out. Chris was the only other person who could still walk, so we both went with Philip to get help. We figured the best place to go would be the nearest hospital; which was Brookhaven.'

Geoffrey began to laugh, shaking his head slowly.

'What's so funny?' she added.

'That's the same bus I came here to find. There was a… report that the bus had gone missing, so I came here to find out what was going on. I'm a cop, you see. I dunno if I've already mentioned that.'

_Hey little fishy, I will snag you on my hook!_

_Fishy, fishy in your throat, the tiny blade is stuck!_

_Reel you in, reel you in, my baby's getting thinner,_

_Little fishy reel you in; you'll make a tasty dinner!!!_

The poem seemed to blossom into her head from nowhere, and she didn't see the relevance. Then a question asked by Geoffrey mere seconds later answered it for her.

'Katie? What's your full name?'

'Kathryn Elizabeth Marlin… Oh my god…' she suddenly realised. She looked down the street ahead with fear in her eyes.

'What is it?' he asked.

'Look…' she whispered, pointing down the same line her eyes were following.

_You'll make good food for dinner!!!_

There at the end of the street stood the bane of her life. It was the stalker of her nightmares and the stalker of her reality; the Pyramid Head.

'What am I looking at?' he asked quizzically. He couldn't see anything in the thick, soupy fog.

'You can't see him?' she frantically squealed.

'No. I can't see 'him'. Are you feeling OK?'

She ignored his question and proceeded to back away. Then she turned and ran; despite the crippling pain in her ribs.

'Katie!' Geoffrey called after her, giving chase. 'Come back, you'll get lost!' he called. Entering the street she ran into, he could see her nowhere. She could barely walk, so how the hell could she have given him the slip already?

Something was down there though, and although it was smaller than Katie, it was something that he'd secretly been looking for since they began their journey from _Jack's Inn_; the small dog that wanted him to follow.

Wagging its tail when Geoffrey met its gaze, the dog woofed happily and began to playfully chase its tail.

'Not now!' he called to it. 'I need to find the girl.'

The dog snarled suddenly, and suddenly in its place was a huge dog of the same breed, only as big as a horse. Its patchy, rotting fur was underlined with thick, tense muscles, and the once dainty paws were now gigantic slabs; from which protruded cruel, curved claws.

'_Lighten up Geoffrey! Forget the girl for one moment. Let's go on an adventure!' _a dark and foreboding voice flourished into his head.

He took a step back and pulled the gun out of his pocket. The extra weight assured him that it was loaded, so taking another step back; he raised the barrel and pointed towards the rotting beast.

Sensing Geoffrey's hostility, the dog hunched its back legs menacingly, and a deep throaty growl issued from the back of its throat.

'Whoa, easy there boy. Good doggy!' he eased, lowering the gun and hoping that the dog would calm down. He looked quickly at the signpost. Which way should he run? The other signs were labelled 'Central Silent Hill' and 'Toluca Lake'. Central Silent Hill he saw had a Police Station and a small mall. He decided that that area would have better cover, assuming he made it that far; so he slowly inched his way towards the nearest alley and hoped it was too narrow for the dog to follow.

'_Where the fuck do you think you're going?' _the throaty voice came again, and the dog sprang; racing towards him at an alarming speed. Raising the gun he fired a bullet into beasts shoulder, causing it to stumble. Whilst it was temporarily grounded, he turned and ran into the alley. He successfully cleared a collection of trashcans and hid behind a smashed brick wall.

Regulating his breathing to sound quieter, he edged his way across the alley and ducked into a small walled yard. He heard a crash as the beast smashed through the bins, and felt the ground tremble as it padded in his direction. Sidling up to the back door of the house, he slipped out of the yard and quickly ran down the narrow passage connecting it to the front yard. Vaulting the fence he crossed the street towards the town centre; ducking and weaving as fast as he dared between the shadows, and the sparse cover provided by the few cars and bins that were dotted along the road.

He heard a mournful howl cut the silence like a knife, and a cold icy finger ran down his spine. Gripping the gun so had that it shook; he increased his pace and entered the next street.

- - - - -

Katie stumbled blindly through the streets, unaware of whether or not Geoffrey was behind her, but unable to forget that the Pyramid Head would not let her go. As she twisted and turned through the blinding alleyways, passages, arches, gardens and narrow streets, she was all too aware of the _thump, scrape, thump, scrape _that although sounded distant, did not fade as she ran. She had no idea which direction it was coming from, and therefore panicked at the thought that she could be unwittingly running directly into its clutches.

Turning into a main road, she was horrified to see the monster exit into the same street from the opposite side some 100 yards away. She screamed in shock and ran down the sidewalk towards a large neon sign displaying the words _Heaven's Night_. The sounds of laughter came from within, over the clinking of glasses and the sound of a funky blues guitar solo.

She moaned in relief. There were people in this town after all! She chanced a glance behind her, and there it was, speeding towards her; pointed metal helmet lowered in a charge. The knife it had previously been dragging was now held in both hands, and she knew that if she didn't run faster she'd be cut down where she stood.

Nursing her tender ribs she put whatever energy she had left in her into her legs, and they propelled her forwards with one last burst of effort. Jumping the stone steps two at a time she grabbed the door handle, twisted it and threw it open. The squeal of rusty metal issued from the Pyramid Head as a sign of defeat, and she slammed the door behind her with the knife a mere hairs breadth from the back of her head. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

Sliding down the door she turned and peered through the keyhole, expecting to see the creature leaving, or perhaps even readying itself to break down the door. Strangely enough though, there was absolutely no sign of it. Feeling brave she stood up and opened the door, stepping outside and looking around.

Nothing.

She went back inside and closed the door. The sounds of laughter that she'd heard were no more, and the seedy, neon-lit gentleman's club was empty of human life. There were however, signs that somebody _had _been there very recently. A spilled glass of beer; the pool still dripping of the dark wooded table and onto the badly carpeted floor; a still smoking cigarette butt, glowing in an ash tray; the rounded ass indentation in the dark brown leather of a nearby stall. She laughed at this feebly, taking a seat on the still warm seat.

She felt safe in there. The dark, smoky atmosphere was comforting, and she felt her thoughts drift away from the terrible position she was in, and down the wooded garden path of memory lane…

…_I came home from school one day through the old leafy alley that ran behind my house. I didn't like it during the winter, because all the leaves disappeared, and all that was left was the harsh, pointed twigs that pointed at me cruelly. It was usually wet during that time of year too, so they'd be a cold, damp draught blowing up it, and the long green grass would soak you with one touch of your shoe._

_During the summer though, it was lovely to walk down. I suppose I'd always been quite agoraphobic about winter, so the closely knitted blanket of leaves that enveloped the path was really comforting to me. _

_One time on a really warm summer's day, I was walking along it with my little sister Mary on our way home from school, and I remember seeing Daddy in the back garden through a crack in our fence. I told Mary to stand back and I had a look to see what he was doing._

'_God dammit!' he shouted angrily, hammering at a piece of wood. Who knows what he was trying to make. Daddy was always loud and aggressive, but never hurt anybody. Until that day._

_Mom came out of the house with a tall glass of water; or maybe lemonade._

'_Hey honey. How's the building going?' she asked him gently, as all wives do._

'_I'm doing OK,' he grumbled back at her._

_She put down the drink, rolled her eyes, and then turned to go back into the house. Dad continued to hammer, but then he missed the nail and instead walloped his hand with a meaty crack._

_He screamed out in pain and Mom came running out._

'_What happened? Are you OK?' she exclaimed over Daddies wails, but he just looked at her horribly._

_She ran back into the house and emerged a few minutes later with a small first aid kit._

'_Jesus woman! Put that stuff away,' he shouted, batting the bandage she'd carefully held out to him away._

_Still she persisted, until something in him snapped and he grabbed her around the throat, shoving her to the ground in front of him._

'_Not now, please! The kids will be back any minute. Please, don't let them see us like this,' begged Mom._

_Daddy gave her the evilest look I have ever seen, and after he'd dealt her a hard slap to her face he disappeared into the house, leaving her sobbing and dejected on the back lawn…_

…_It's strange… The things you remember…_

…She woke from hr daydream a few minutes later, and found that she was crying. Big salty tears ran down her face and gathered on her chin, where they bobbed for a few seconds, and then fell onto her lap. It was this tickling sensation that had roused her, and that was just as well.

The rear door to the bar had been ripped open whilst she dreamed of other places, and one of the tall tube headed things was crawling over the bar; its curling lips gibbering and sucking at the air hungrily. She realised after a few seconds of terror that the beast had not yet seen her, so as quietly as a mouse; she slid down the leather and into the dark, cool recess under the table. She felt safe in the closed surroundings, and could watch the creature without it seeing her. She relaxed slightly, and shifted her weight to get more comfortable.

As it scuttled across the surface, it clumsily clipped an empty wine bottle and sent it crashing to the ground. Startled, the creature jumped up and squealed a strange warbling note that hurt her ears. Jumping onto ground level, it continued its patrol; sniffing this way and sniffing that way. She was certain that it would find her any time soon, but the silhouette of a tall man appeared in the doorway. The monster jumped to its feet and raised its claws, gibbering and garbling at the figure.

The man remained unmoving, except for the right arm that quickly and quietly removed a small pistol from the inside of his jacket and took aim at the monsters head.

A deafening boom rang out through the club, and the creature fell to the ground in a splatter of its own blood and faecal matter. Katie expected the monster to get back to its feet, since from her own experience they took more than a single shot to kill. However, apart from a violent twitch, it remained unmoved.

The heavy clomp of large boots sounded as her saviour marched into the room and stopped at the foot of the bar. His face could not yet be seen, but a short brown cigarette could be see clenched between his teeth; its orange end glowing in the shadow cast by the brim of his hat.

'It's OK. You can come out now,' came the surprisingly softly spoken voice.

She crawled out from under the table, thankful to have been rescued, but still uneasy in the stranger's presence.

'Umm, hello,' she started, looking at her feet.

The stranger remained unmoving, but spoke to her in the same calm tone.

'What are you doing here?' was his eventual response.

She shifted her weight uncomfortably.

'I was trying to escape one of those, things…' she replied.

He turned to her and pulled out a length of rope, and a rough Hessian sack.

'We do not appreciate your meddling here young girl. We have enough problems trying to control the new conjuror, without you casting the demons under your own spell!' he growled, advancing on her.

She backed away, suddenly scared. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' she pleaded. It was true. She really did have no clue.

'I don't know, or care how you got here, but you're coming with me!'

He grabbed her viciously, and threw the sack over her head, wrapping a length of rope around the base and tightening it sharply. She gasped for breath as her wrists were bound behind her back, and cried out in pain as he slung her over his shoulder right onto her broken ribs. It was in this instant that she blacked out; unable to shout for help or try and wriggle free.

The Stranger sighed, drew a lungful of smoke from his short, pungent cigarette, and marched off into the darkness…


End file.
